The assessment and management of mental health difficulties for deaf people has been largely ignored by mental health services. This book is really inspiring; it is written by two relevant mental health professionals who are deaf themselves, and who have written this book to assist other clinicians with limited experience in the area of deafness and comorbid mental health problems. The authors start this book from the fact that any clinician working in generic mental health services would come across at least one patient with comorbid deafness, both considering children and adult patients. Generally, education and training on the main aspects of mental health for this particular population is practically inexistent. In this book, Margaret du Feu and Cathy Chovaz try to address this problem by providing applicable scientific information and sharing their vast clinical experience in the field.

The authors first focus on the main facts surrounding deafness, its prevalence in the general population, the most common causes and the different types of deafness, as well as the most commonly associated comorbid disabilities. They describe valuable information regarding the historical and social context of deafness, and they highlight several aspects of the sign language and the modern developments of cochlear implants. The book then follows the life journey of the deafness from the psychological development of deaf children, their educational phases and parental reactions to deafness; to the clinical assessment and management of mental health problems or illnesses in the deaf adolescent, adult and older person. Furthermore, the authors outline the main psychiatric diagnoses and the increased risk for longer periods of untreated illness owing to difficulties in relation to assessment and the lack of specific training for mental health professionals. Margaret du Feu and Cathy Chovaz show also interest in the legal aspects and forensic issues of this particular population and they finish the book with recommendations for better service development. Most mental health policies specifically state that access to services should be provided to everyone in an equitable way and that should not be discrimination against any group on grounds of age, gender, ethnicity, culture or disability. Despite this, whenever mental health services for deaf people have developed, they have grown in response to previously unmet needs. The authors recommend that deaf mental health services need to work closely with the deaf community and its organisations in order to achieve the right of every deaf person to have a full and equal access to mental health care.