Imperial College MPH

Marginal voices- A quest to improve mental health diagnosis among the Deaf community in the UK Written by MPH Student Ms Reda Misghina Each year in the UK, at least 1 in 4 people experience a mental health problem.[1] When faced with a mental health illness, we often hear the words ‘it helps to talk about it’. The tool of communication in Deaf individuals makes it so that ‘talking’ takes a different format in their ability to convey thought. Various misconceptions about Deafness and the obstacles faced to access mental health services must then be conceptualised differently. Deafness as an identity   In the UK, around 10 million people are considered to be Deaf.[2] The heterogeneous forms of what it means to be Deaf renders it a complex subject. Forms of identification is an interesting factor. For example, there is a distinction between a deaf person (lower case ‘d’) which refers to those with severe hearing problems or who became hard of hearing later in life, compared to a De