ABSTRACT
As is well known to those who tried, successfully or otherwise, providing mental health services to deaf people is a formidable task. Until recently, mental health service providers have joined the medical and rehabilitation professions in subscribing to what Lane (1990) called the infirmity model of deafness, a view that deafness is a medically defined deficit typically accompanied by mental health complications caused by communication difficulties and related sequelae. Today, practitioners increasingly recognize the sociocultural implications of deafness as a different way of living as well as communicating (cultural model; Lane, 1990).
