front cover of Parallel Views
Parallel Views
Education and Access for Deaf People in France and the United States
The French American Foundation
Gallaudet University Press, 1994

front cover of Parents and Their Deaf Children
Parents and Their Deaf Children
The Early Years
Kathryn P. Meadow-Orlans
Gallaudet University Press, 2003

To correct the paucity of information on deaf or hard of hearing children and their parents’ experiences with early intervention services, researchers explored these relationships as part of the National Parent Project. From this investigation, Parents and Their Deaf Children details the experiences of a group of parents and their deaf children from the first identification of the latter’s hearing loss through their early years in elementary school. Renowned scholars Kathryn Meadow-Orlans, Donna Mertens, and Marilyn Sass-Lehrer reveal here for the first time the goals and expectations of the parents, the children’s achievements and troubles, and the families’ satisfaction and disappointment with health and educational systems.

       Parents and their Deaf Children stems from a nationwide survey of parents with six-to-seven-year-old deaf or hard of hearing children, followed up by interviews with 80 parents. The authors not only discuss the parents’ communication choices for their children, but also provide how parents’ experiences differ, especially for those whose children are hard of hearing, have additional conditions, or have cochlear implants. Also, one chapter is devoted to families from minority cultures. The final section of this distinctive study offers solid advice for other parents of deaf children and also the professionals who serve them.

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The Parents’ Guide to Baby Signs
Early Communication with Your Infant
Leann Sebrey
Gallaudet University Press, 2009

Experienced ASL instructor Leann Sebrey champions two-way sign communication between parents and their infants who are just months old as a way to bond more closely and reduce frustration, while also maximizing the children’s intelligence and emotional quotients.

Sebrey’s book The Parents’ Guide to Baby Signs: Early Communication with Your Infant lays out an easy, step-by-step process that will instill confidence in parents who have never signed before. She begins by explaining why ASL is best for all children, both deaf and hearing. Sebrey also recognizes the different ways young children learn, encouraging parents and caregivers to sign with infants at all times as a natural part of their interaction. She reveals the first indications of when a baby is ready to communicate, and includes a list of signs to provide parents with a good starting point. Sebrey discusses the moments when infants are most receptive to learn signs and outlines numerous practical techniques with plenty of helpful hints to speed the process. She describes the pleasure of seeing a baby’s first sign, and tells parents how to interpret baby signs, including what to do when a baby uses the wrong signs. Full of easy-to-grasp illustrations of child and family-oriented signs, The Parents’ Guide to Baby Signs is the best how-to book for parents, caregivers, and educators to teach early communication to infants.

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The Parents' Guide to Cochlear Implants
Patricia M. Chute
Gallaudet University Press, 2002
Now, parents of deaf children have at hand a complete guide to the process of cochlear implantation. Written by two eminent professionals in deaf education, The Parents’ Guide to Cochlear Implants explains in a friendly, easy-to-follow style each stage of the process. Parents will discover how to have their child evaluated to determine her or his suitability for an implant. They’ll learn about implant device options, how to choose an implant center, and every detail of the surgical procedure. The initial “switch-on” is described along with counseling about device maintenance.

Most importantly, parents will learn their roles in helping their child adjust to and successfully use the cochlear implant. The Parents’ Guide to Cochlear Implants emphasizes such critical subjects as learning to listen through home activities, implants as tools for language development, and critical issues regarding school placement. This encouraging book considers the implications for performance in light of the whole child, including issues related to Deaf culture and cochlear implants. The authors also include brief stories by parents whose children have had implants that provide reassuring actual experiences to parents considering the procedure for their own child. With a last word on parenting perspectives and a rich source of resources in the appendices, this one-of-a-kind guide will arm parents of deaf children with complete confidence to make informed decisions about cochlear implantation.
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Paris in America
A Deaf Nanticoke Shoemaker and His Daughter
Clara Jean Mosley Hall
Gallaudet University Press, 2018
Clara Jean Mosley Hall has inhabited various cultural worlds in her life: Native American, African American, Deaf, and hearing. The hearing daughter of a Deaf Nanticoke man, who grew up in Dover, Delaware’s Black community in the 1950s and 60s, Hall describes the intersections of these identities in Paris in America. By sharing her father’s experiences and relating her own struggles and successes, Hall honors her father’s legacy of hard work and perseverance and reveals the complexities of her own unique background.
​​      Hall was abandoned by her Deaf African American mother at a young age and forged a close bond with her father, James Paris Mosley, who communicated with her in American Sign Language. Although his family was Native American, they—like many other Nanticoke Native Americans of that region—had assimilated over time into Dover’s Black community. Hall vividly recounts the social and cultural elements that shaped her, from Jim Crow to the forced integration of public schools, to JFK and Motown. As a Coda (child of deaf adults) in a time when no accessibility or interpreting services were available, she was her father’s sole means of communication with the hearing world, a heavy responsibility for a child. After her turbulent teenage years, and with the encouragement of her future husband, she attended college and discovered that her skills as a fluent ASL user were a valuable asset in the field of education.
​​      Hall went on to become a college professor, mentor, philanthropist, and advocate for Deaf students from diverse backgrounds. Her memoir is a celebration of her family, her faith, her journey, and her heritage.
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Partners in Education
Issues and Trends from the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf
Donald F. Moores
Gallaudet University Press, 2011

The 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED) witnessed revolutionary exchanges on the vital themes in education. Presenters addressed topics encompassing seven major strands: Educational Environments, Language and Literacy, Early Intervention, Unique Challenges in Developing Countries, Educating Learners with Diverse Needs, Technology in Education, and Sign Language and Deaf Culture. These presentations and ensuing dialogues raised many complex questions. Partners in Education: Issues and Trends from the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf features all of the keynote addresses by renowned luminaries in deaf education: Breda Carty, Karen Ewing, Nassozi Kiyaga, John Luckner, Connie Mayer and Beverly Trezek, volume editor Donald F. Moores, Peter V. Paul, Antti Raike, Claudine Storbeck, James Tucker, and Alys Young.

Most critically, the contributors to this collection explore the many multifaceted challenges facing the world’s deaf students. Deaf children are being diagnosed with overlays of disabilities; more deaf children are growing up in poverty; and many deaf children represent minority racial/ethnic groups or are immigrants to their country of residence. The situation for deaf individuals in the most impoverished countries of the world is desperate and of crisis proportions. This volume brings these themes to light through its exceptional synthesis of the outstanding discourse that took place at ICED 2010, including abstracts from 30 celebrated conference presentations.

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The People Who Spell
The Last Students from the Mexican National School for the Deaf
Claire L. Ramsey
Gallaudet University Press, 2011

The Escuela Nacional para Sordomudos (ENS), translated as the Mexican National School for the Deaf, opened its doors in the 1860s as part of the republic’s intention to educate its deaf people. The ENS did not use Lengua de Señas Mexicana (LSM), Mexico’s native sign language, for instruction, though they tolerated LSM use by the students. The school was closed permanently in 1972, thus leaving its former students still alive today as the last links to this historic institution. In this compelling social history, Claire L. Ramsey presents these unique Deaf Mexicans from their extraordinary experiences as ENS students and signers to their current personal lives.

One ENS signer, María de los Ángeles Bedolla, inspired the title of the book, The People Who Spell. In her account, she describes herself and her peers as cultured and educated compared to the young deaf people of today. The ENS signers pride themselves on el deletreo, LSM fingerspelling, which they consider key to their sophistication. Ramsey relates each of the signers’ childhoods, marriages, work experiences, and retirements. However, she brings threads of their stories together to reveal a common and abiding disappointment in modern-day Mexico’s failure to educate its deaf citizens according to the promise made more than 100 years ago. The narratives of the ENS signers detail their remarkable lives and heritage but also legitimately question the future of Mexico’s young deaf people.

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A Phone of Our Own
The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell
Harry G. Lang
Gallaudet University Press, 2000

In 1964, of the more than 85 million telephones in the United States and Canada, less than one percent were used regularly by deaf people. If they didn’t ask their hearing neighbors for help, they depended upon their hearing children, some as young as three years old, to act as intermediaries for business calls or medical consultations. In that same year, three enterprising deaf men, Robert H. Weitbrecht, James C. Marsters, and Andrew Saks, started the process that led to deaf people around the world having an affordable phone system that they could use.

       Weitbrecht, a successful physicist with the Stanford Research Institute, had been experimenting with a teletypewriter (TTY) used with shortwave radios. When Marsters, a prominent deaf orthodontist, met Weitbrecht and saw his TTY, he immediately suggested the possibility of resolving deaf people’s decades-long struggle to have access to telecommunications without relying totally upon hearing people as go-betweens. Andrew Saks brought his business acumen to the group, which soon set to work overcoming the daunting problems they faced.

       Harry G. Lang’s A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell tells how these three men collaborated to solve the technical difficulties of developing a coupling device for TTYs that would translate sounds into discernible letters. More remarkably, and with the help of an expanding corps of Deaf advocates, they successfully assaulted the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), which in its efforts to protect its monopoly, smashed old TTYs to keep them from being used for potentially competitive purposes. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also resisted efforts to build a telephone system for deaf people that was available, affordable, portable, and fully accessible. Lang recounts in vivid terms how many other Deaf individuals and groups from all walks of life joined Weitbrecht, Marsters, and Saks against these forces. A Phone of Our Own is an entertaining and engrossing story of how they fought and won, and changed the world for the better for deaf people everywhere.

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Photographic Memories
Selected Essays, Playlets, and Stories
Willy Conley
Gallaudet University Press, 2023
Photographic Memories is an anthology of essays, playlets, and short fiction by writer and photographer Willy Conley. The pieces in this collection are grounded in Deaf experiences, a hallmark of Conley’s work. Written from the unique perspective of a Deaf artist who navigates between the Deaf and hearing worlds, Conley depicts a variety of topics, settings, and characters: a day in the life of a traveling Deaf theater company, a nail salon, a baseball player trying to go pro. Conley also addresses critical issues at the heart of his Deaf identity, such as creating professional opportunities for Deaf theater artists, the need for better standards in sign language interpreting, and ableism.

Original photographs taken by the author accompany his writings and invite the reader to contemplate the often-blurred lines between reality and memory.
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front cover of Pictures in the Air
Pictures in the Air
The Story of the National Theatre of the Deaf
Stephen C. Baldwin
Gallaudet University Press, 1994
Now available in paperback; ISBN 1-56368-140-4
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Pinky Extension and Eye Gaze
Language Use in Deaf Communities
Ceil Lucas
Gallaudet University Press, 1998

The Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities Series continues its detailed exploration of language dynamics among deaf people in the fourth entry, Pinky Extension and Eye Gaze: Language Use in Deaf Communities. This volume’s ten meticulously prepared chapters reflect the refinements of research in six major sociolinguistics areas. Rob Hoopes’ work, “A Preliminary Examination of Pinky Extension: Suggestions Regarding Its Occurrence, Constraints, and Function,” commences Part One: Variation with a sound explanation of this American Sign Language (ASL) phonological characteristic. Part Two: Languages in Contact includes findings by Jean Ann on contact between Taiwanese Sign Language and written Taiwanese.

       Priscilla Shannon Gutierrez considers the relationship of educational policy with language and cognition in deaf children in Part Three: Language in Education, and in Part Four: Discourse Analysis, Melanie Metzger discusses eye gaze and pronominal reference in ASL. Part Five: Second-Language Learning presents the single chapter “An Acculturation Model for ASL Learners,” by Mike Kemp. Sarah E. Burns defines Irish Sign Language as Ireland’s second minority language after Gaelic, in Part Six: Language Attitudes, the final area of concentration in this rigorously researched volume. These studies and the others by the respected scholars featured in Pinky Extension and Eye Gaze make it an outstanding and eminently valuable addition to this series.

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A Place of Their Own
Creating the Deaf Community in America
John Vickrey Van Cleve
Gallaudet University Press, 1989

Using original sources, this unique book focuses on the Deaf community during the 19th century. Largely through schools for the deaf, deaf people began to develop a common language and a sense of community.

       A Place of Their Own brings the perspective of history to bear on the reality of deafness and provides fresh and important insight into the lives of deaf Americans.

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The Politics of Deafness
Owen Wrigley
Gallaudet University Press, 1997

The Politics of Deafness embarks upon a post-modern examination of the search for identity in deafness and its relationship to the prevalent hearing culture that has marginalized Deaf people. Author Owen Wrigley plainly states his intention to disrupt “normal” thought about the popularly considered condition of deafness as a physical deficiency. From his decade of experience working and living in the Deaf community in Thailand, he uses wide-ranging examples to go beyond disputing conventional theorists for their interpretation of deafness as the lack of a sensory function. By calling attention to the different lingual potential created by the instant visual expression of cyberspace, he explodes orthodox conceptualization of the nature of language as serially ordered and dependent upon sound.

       In bold style, this provocative work poses the relationship of the bodies physical and mental of Deaf people as subject to a form of “colonialism” by the dominant Hearing culture. It proceeds to expose and attack presumptions and practices that derive from and descend upon deaf bodies. Related analysis also addresses tensions little noted in the current literature on deafness and on the popular move to reconstitute Deafness as a global culture.

       Through displacement of logistical anchors, ironic stances, and disconcerting perspectives, The Politics of Deafness practices a form of de-naturalization to demand space within and between the normalizing frames of daily lives. By doing so, it offers an insightful and intriguing perspective on the meanings of Deafness, the politics of Deaf identity, and what it costs to be “unusual.”

[more]

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Primary Movement in Sign Languages
A Study of Six Languages
Donna Jo Napoli
Gallaudet University Press, 2011

Is it possible to identify sign languages by their prosody, that is, the rhythm and stress of sign production, and then determine if they are related to each other or other sign languages? If so, reasoned authors Donna Jo Napoli, Mark Mai, and Nicholas Gaw, perhaps they could offer such identification as a new way to typologize, or categorize sign languages by their structural features. Their new collaboration Primary Movement in Sign Languages: A Study of Six Languages traces the process and findings from this unique investigation.

Resolving on the direction of movement as the prosodic factor to track, they began their research by comparing five sign languages: American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL), Italian Sign Language (LIS), French Sign Language (LSF), and Australian Sign Language (Auslan). They soon discovered that the languages in their study clustered with respect to several characteristics along genetic lines, with BSL and Auslan contrasting with LSF, LIS, and ASL. They learned that sign languages with the same geographic origin evolved differently when relocated, and they isolated differences in each individual sign language. They compared four of these established sign languages with the newly emerging Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), with the exception of ASL due to their past close contact, thereby validating their work as the first study to identify sign language relationships without depending on grammar.

[more]

front cover of Professional Autonomy in Video Relay Service Interpreting
Professional Autonomy in Video Relay Service Interpreting
Erica Alley
Gallaudet University Press, 2019
Video relay service (VRS) is a federally funded service that provides telecommunications access for deaf people. It is also a for-profit industry with guidelines that may limit the autonomy of the sign language interpreters who work in VRS settings. In this volume, Erica Alley examines how VRS interpreters, or “Communication Assistants,” exercise professional autonomy despite the constraints that arise from rules and regulations established by federal agencies and corporate entities. Through interviews with VRS interpreters, Alley reveals the balance they must achieve in providing effective customer service while meeting the quantitative measures of success imposed by their employer in a highly structured call center environment.

       Alley considers the question of how VRS fits into the professional field of interpreting, and discovers that—regardless of the profit-focused mentality of VRS providers—interpreters make decisions with the goal of creating quality customer service experiences for deaf consumers, even if it means “breaking the rules.” Her findings shed light on the decision-making process of interpreters and how their actions are governed by principles of self-care, care for colleagues, and concern for the quality of services provided. Professional Autonomy in Video Relay Service Interpreting is essential reading in interpreter education courses and interpreter training programs.
[more]

front cover of Promoting Positive Transition Outcomes
Promoting Positive Transition Outcomes
Effective Planning for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Young Adults
Pamela Luft
Gallaudet University Press, 2016
Many students struggle with the transition from high school to the next stage of their lives. For deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students, that struggle can be intensified by barriers and discriminatory attitudes they face in their communities, schools, and workplaces. Though much progress has been made, they are often underemployed and underpaid, and they receive postsecondary training at lower rates than other disability groups. Author Pamela Luft explores the reasons for these statistics and offers strategies and resources that can improve outcomes.

       Promoting Positive Transition Outcomes is the most comprehensive discussion of transition planning and results for DHH students now available. Luft begins with an overview of the historical and current challenges to DHH students and their academic and vocational potential. She explores the importance of forming an identity and building foundational social and problem-solving skills. She then reviews the history of rehabilitation and workforce legislation, which now mandates that every student with an individualized education plan (IEP) have a transition plan in place by the age of 16. Most schools, however, are not equipped to meet the needs of a population as diverse as DHH students. She examines the services that are currently available in high schools and offers recommendations for strengthening transition team planning by reaching out to external experts. The volume concludes with suggestions for creating a framework to address the challenges of transition planning for deaf and hard of hearing students and offers guidance on building effective plans.
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The Proper Way to Educate the Deaf
A Modern Annotated Translation
The Abbé Charles-Michel de l’Epée
Gallaudet University Press, 2024
This volume presents the first complete English translation of the Abbé de l’Épée’s seminal work describing his methodology for educating deaf children. Originally published in French in 1798, this modern annotated edition offers readers a translation that is documentary in scope and that reflects historic attitudes toward deaf people and deaf education while maintaining the conventions of contemporary English.

De l’Épée provides an anecdotal account of his methods and philosophy for educating deaf children using a sign system based on the French Sign Language of the era but adapted to visually represent the linguistic features of spoken and written French. His work laid the foundation for the use of the “manual method,” or sign language, in deaf education. One section of the text, originally published in Latin, outlines the intellectual clash between de l’Épée and Samuel Heinicke, an early proponent of oral education who contested the use of sign language.

De l’Épée’s text holds significant cultural and historical value for the fields of deaf studies and deaf education. This English language translation reveals de l’Épée’s own story of how he came to be known as the “father of the deaf” and is enriched by scholarly contributions that provide essential historical context and a framework for modern understanding.
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front cover of Prosodic Markers and Utterance Boundaries in American Sign Language Interpretation
Prosodic Markers and Utterance Boundaries in American Sign Language Interpretation
Brenda Nicodemus
Gallaudet University Press, 2009

The Fifth Volume in the Studies in Interpretation Series

In interpreting, professionals must be able to convey to their clients the rhythm, stress, and length of phrases used by the communicating parties to indicate their respective emotional states. Such subtleties, which can signal sarcasm and irony or whether a statement is a question or a command, are defined in linguistics as prosody. Brenda Nicodemus’s new volume, the fifth in the Studies in Interpretation series, discusses the prosodic features of spoken and signed languages, and reports the findings of her groundbreaking research on prosodic markers in ASL interpretation.
     In her study, Nicodemus videotaped five highly skilled interpreters as they interpreted a spoken English lecture into ASL. Fifty Deaf individuals viewed the videotaped interpretations and indicated perceived boundaries in the interpreted discourse. These identified points were then examined for the presence of prosodic markers that might be responsible for the perception of a boundary. Prosodic Markers and Utterance Boundaries reports on the characteristics of the ASL markers, including their frequency, number, duration, and timing. Among other findings, the results show that interpreters produce an average of seven prosodic markers at each boundary point. The markers are produced both sequentially and simultaneously and under conditions of highly precise timing. Further, the results suggest that the type of prosodic markers used by interpreters are both systematic and stylistic.

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front cover of Psychological and Psychoeducational Assessment of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Adolescents
Psychological and Psychoeducational Assessment of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Adolescents
Margery S. Miller
Gallaudet University Press, 2015
The obstacles to valid and meaningful assessment of deaf and hard of hearing children and adolescents are great, yet professionals are regularly asked to conduct comprehensive evaluations to determine resource and program eligibility, test modifications in school, classroom and home recommendations, and referrals. In this important new text, the authors define the skills required of the examiners, explain the complex nature of these assessments, and describe ways to intelligently use existing tests.

       Authors Margery S. Miller, Tania Thomas-Presswood, Kurt Metz, and Jennifer Lukomski bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to this in-depth treatment of topics essential to educators and school psychologists. They cover such critical areas as test construction and measurement; the diversity in American Deaf culture; the role of parents in the assessment process; neuropsychological assessments; nonverbal methods for assessing intelligence; and the need for sign language competency when testing cognitive and language skills.

       The text concludes with recommendations for the development of valid and reliable tests for all students who are deaf and hard of hearing.
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front cover of Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups
Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups
Irene W. Leigh
Gallaudet University Press, 2010

The second edition of Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups features the introduction of six new chapters that complement full revisions of original chapters with advances in the field since its initial publication. The first part begins with a new chapter on the current ethical issues relevant to working with deaf clients. In subsequent chapters it provides updated information on the diversity of consumer knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. Deaf therapists and their involvement in the Deaf community also are scrutinized in this context.

     The revised second part examines psychotherapy for various constituencies, including deaf women; lesbian, gay, and bisexual deaf populations; children of deaf parents; and people with Usher syndrome. Part Three chapters consider interventions with African American deaf clients, American Indians who are deaf, and Asians who are American and deaf. A new chapter expands information on therapy for Latino deaf clients.

     The final section incorporates three new chapters on other deaf populations — deaf college students, recipients of cochlear implants, and deaf elderly clients. Also, new information has been added to chapters on the treatment of deaf survivors of sexual abuse and deaf clients with chemical dependency. The last addition to the second edition outlines dialectical behavior therapy for deaf clients, a valuable option for clinicians.


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front cover of Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups
Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups
Irene W. Leigh
Gallaudet University Press, 1999

The second edition of Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups features the introduction of six new chapters that complement full revisions of original chapters with advances in the field since its initial publication. The first part begins with a new chapter on the current ethical issues relevant to working with deaf clients. In subsequent chapters it provides updated information on the diversity of consumer knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. Deaf therapists and their involvement in the Deaf community also are scrutinized in this context.

       The revised second part examines psychotherapy for various constituencies, including deaf women; lesbian, gay, and bisexual deaf populations; children of deaf parents; and people with Usher syndrome. Part Three chapters consider interventions with African American deaf clients, American Indians who are deaf, and Asians who are American and deaf. A new chapter expands information on therapy for Latino deaf clients.

       The final section incorporates three new chapters on other deaf populations — deaf college students, recipients of cochlear implants, and deaf elderly clients. Also, new information has been added to chapters on the treatment of deaf survivors of sexual abuse and deaf clients with chemical dependency. The last addition to the second edition outlines dialectical behavior therapy for deaf clients, a valuable option for clinicians.

[more]


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