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No description available.

No description available.

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Aims were to describe depressive symptoms among culturally Deaf adults, describe the words in American Sign Language (ASL) that best express depressive symptoms, and describe shared meaning of depressive symptoms. Primary care providers commonly discuss depressive symptoms with clients, which can lead to earlier identification of those at risk for depression. However, providers may not discuss depressive symptoms with Deaf clients due to communication barriers. Health care providers are rarely familiar with ASL, and depression screening tools are not easily translated from English to ASL. There has been no investigation about Deaf adult's experiences with depressive symptoms or the signs used to describe those experiences. The study method employed hermeneutic interviews and analysis. Nine culturally Deaf adults were interviewed three times each, and certified interpreters were used to assist with ASL communication. After reviewing each interview with the interpreter for accuracy of translation, text was generated through word-for-word transcription and researcher observations; text was then read to obtain a broad understanding of the experience. Findings: Symptoms described by Deaf adults paralleled those of hearing adults. Four shared meanings emerged: 1) Feeling depressed, defined as the physical and emotional manifestations of depression and the ASL signs and phrases used to communicate these; 2) Emotional chaos leading to depression, defined as experiences of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood that led to feelings of depression such as feeling different, feeling isolated from family and peers, feeling excluded, and feeling limited by others; 3) Reaching out, defined as learning to walk in the Deaf world while also navigating the hearing world; 4) I am Deaf - I am not broken! Conclusions: This research provided a description of depressive symptoms as may occur among culturally Deaf adults, which may lead to increased understanding of depression as experienced by and expressed by members of the Deaf culture. In this way, improved communication and understanding between health care providers and Deaf adults can be optimized. Such knowledge may potentiate the earlier identification of culturally Deaf adults at risk for depression in the primary care setting, thereby reducing morbidity and mortality in this underserved population.

The purpose of this study was to gather information about the demographic variables and responsibilities of British Columbian itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing, investigate if these teachers experience occupational stress, determine the relationships between these variables and their stress levels, and to determine which manifestations of stress were most prevalent for this population. Two questionnaires were used in this study: the Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI), which was a standardized measure of stress, and the Itinerant Teacher Questionnaire (ITQ), which was a self-created questionnaire to gather information about demographics and itinerant responsibilities. The survey packages were mailed during the months of May and June 1998, to 92 itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing in BC, Canada. The response rate was 76% (n=70). The demographic information and responsibilities of the typical BC itinerant teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing were presented and discussed. This was the first project of its kind in BC to examine these variables, and it has created a database of information for further research and comparisons. Using the TSI and its norms, it was determined that BC itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing experience lower levels of stress than American teachers. However, caution should be exercised when comparing BC itinerant teachers to the norms, because the norms were collected from the northeast, mid-Atlantic, and southeastern states of the US. From the questionnaires and a multiple regression analysis, the predominant sources of stress for these teachers were determined to be: work overload, lack of time, high numbers of personnel worked with, poor ability to have rooms assigned in a school, poor quality of rooms worked in, weather interference during travel, and poor communication with school personnel. Using the TSI, emotional (anxious, depressed, etc.) and fatigue (physical exhaustion, weakness, etc.) manifestations of stress were the highest rated symptoms of stress experienced by BC itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing. Results, implications, concerns, and suggestions for further study are discussed.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of rehearsal in the short-term memory of visually-presented linguistic material in deaf students. An experimental approach was employed to determine if instruction in overt dactylic and articulatory rehearsal would make a difference in the short-term recall of verbal material. In addition, the study investigated the role of age in the development of short-term memory in deaf children.The subjects in the study were 87 prelingually deaf students at a state residential school for the deaf. The subjects were between the ages of 6-2 and 13-8 and were of at least low average non-verbal intelligence. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (a) instruction in overt dactylic rehearsal, (b) instruction in overt articulatory rehearsal, or (c) no instruction in rehearsal.All subjects received treatment in groups of four to six for one session which lasted approximately 30 minutes. The task consisted of a 5-second exposure to two groups ofCVC trigrams followed by a 15-second rehearsal time. The subjects were then asked to record in writing their recall of the stimulus. Each group received five practice trials I followed by ten test trials. The dependent variable was the number of letters recalled correctly in the correct position.The results of the study were analyzed through multiple regression analysis with age as a covariate. While short-term recall was shown to correlate with age at the .001 level, there were no significant differences among the treatment groups. Consequently, the results of this investigation did not support the hypothesis that instruction in overt dactylic or articulatory rehearsal would significantly improve short-term recall of visually-presented verbal material in deaf students. Nor did the study indicate that the method of overt rehearsal employed would produce significantly different results.

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