Programs for the Deaf

Imagine that you have an illness like schizophrenia.  It's so sneaky and scary that before you realize it, the monster has taken over your life and the entire way you see yourself.  Your disorder, and the disability it causes, has become your personality.

Next imagine that on top of having become this crippling disease, you are also Deaf.  You can't hear the world around you, but by some cruel twist of fate, you can hear the voices in your head.  The isolation and loneliness of mental illness and deafness are the same, but because you have both, you get a double dose.

Now imagine that ninety-nine percent of the mental health counselors out there can't understand you or communicate with you.  They don't know your language or your culture.  They can't read your symptoms, your frustration or your pain.

 Unlike most service providers in the world, MHAC has staff dedicated to address these very needs.  Now, in addition to our well established and ground breaking residential services in West Hartford, Robinson House, we've been able to expand and offer clients with mental health challenges and deafness new employment services that add a life changing dimension to their recovery.

Thanks to funding by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, CHOICES 2 offers clients job placement, training and support, all with the assistance of linguistically and culturally competent counselors.  Employment has been proven to make a positive difference in the lives of people with mental health disabilities.  It's hard to continue to think of yourself as a walking mental illness when other people see you as a sales associate or a nurse's aide or a crossing guard.  And if one productive role can be achieved, others are not so impossible any more.  Success, like knowledge, builds upon itself.  That potential for success and achievement is now available to this long-underserved population.

For more information about Robinson House, our Deaf residential services in West Hartford, please contact Amelia Saunders, Assistant Director of Robinson House at asaunders@mhact.org

For more information about CHOICES 2, our Deaf employment services, please contact:

Waterbury:  203-757-5431 or West Hartford:  860-523-1289  For either one, email ubhan@mhact.org