Mental Health and Deafness
After a disaster, you may be at risk for emotional distress. Warning signs can include feeling isolated, anxious, or having trouble sleeping or difficulty completing daily tasks. If you or someone you know is Deaf or hard of hearing, the national Disaster Distress Hotline now …
My son, who is a teenager, but despite that fairly emotionally healthy, told me last night that he had “anger issues”. the reason he said this is that he got mad. He was in a bad mood, he was stressed, he had 1 thing after …
COVID 19 is causing increased stress and anxiety for everyone. Here are some ways to maintain (and even improve) your well-being despite the pandemic, with a bonus video describing some signs and symptoms of the illness. You can also click this link to see a …
Trauma occurs more frequently in the deaf community than the hearing community. Trauma can be compounded for people are D/deaf by communication barriers during a traumatic event. In fact, lack of communication can itself be a type of trauma. This ASL video by Health Bridges …
Suicide is more prevalent in the Deaf community than the hearing, and current stressors in our world today, such as the pandemic and political turmoil, have increased the mental health burden even further. In this video, Justin Perez, from the office of Deaf Services in …
a guide to meditation and grounding from the CATIE institute, in ASL
Psychiatrist or psychologist, who does what? Most people confuse the roles of a psychiatrist and a psychologist, so this is a video to clarify the difference between the 2, So you know who to go to for the type of help you need. a psychiatrist …
4 Priorities for good mental health Today, more than ever, it’s important to take care of our mental health. Here are some important and evidence proven ways you can do just that. Help others This can be donating to, or volunteering at a charity, or …
This one isn’t in ASL, but it is very visual and has good information on why empathy is important, and how to develop it.
I’m Dr Tracy Epperson, or “Doctor T” for short. I started my career as a sign language interpreter way back in 1998 and quickly became interested in the mental health field. I took all the mental health assignments I could and learned a lot. One big thing I learned was that our current mental health system was not serving the D/deaf community. I decided in 2010 I had to do something about it. I sat down and googled “how to get into medical school” and the rest is history. I was the oldest person in my medical school class and the only one who knew exactly what I was going to specialize in- psychiatry. Finally, all the hard work (and years and YEARS of school) has paid off, and I am now an MD and in my third year of psychiatry training at Unity in Searcy, Arkansas.
I started this website to share what I’ve learned with the Deaf community so that we can all be our healthiest selves possible!