Pre-Conference on Education, Mental Health and Deafness → Nieuws → Home

17 July 2005, Maastricht, The Netherlands Preceding the 20th International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED) ??Fit for the Future?? 18-20 July, 2005, Maastricht, The Netherlands .

The Dutch mental health service for deaf and hard of hearing children and adolescents De Vlier, Dept. of Academic Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Curium, Leiden, and the Dutch service for deaf and hard-of-hearing adults VIA, National Centre for Mental Health and Auditive Disorders, dept. of Rivierduinen, Leidschendam, have been invited to organise a pre-conference meeting on mental health and education (title: Education, Mental Health and Deafness) preceding the 20^th International Congress on the Education of the Deaf on 18^th ? 20^th of July, 2005, in the Maastricht Exhibition & Congress Centre (MECC), Maastricht (www.ICED2005.org).

Invitation

We invite you to attend this pre-conference. If you want to take a more active part in this meeting there is still limited room to submit an abstract for a workshop presentation (see below).

Introduction

Deaf and severely hard-of-hearing children and their families face unique challenges in using mental health services. Few mental health professionals have knowledge of the consequences of being hearing impaired in a world oriented to the needs of hearing people. And even fewer professionals have sufficient knowledge and communication skills to assess and treat severely hearing impaired people. There is a great need for accessible mental health services: most epidemiological studies have shown that deaf and severely hard-of-hearing children and young people are approximately 1.5 to 3 times more likely to experience serious mental health problems than their hearing peers. The range of psychiatric disorders is the same as in hearing children and adolescents, but deaf children (and adolescents) are exposed to additional risk factors including communication problems, physical health problems, central nervous system disorders as a cause of hearing impairments, and intellectual impairment related to these CNS disorders.

Only about 15 years ago selected mental health services started to specialise in assessing and treating deaf and hard-of-hearing children and young people. Since then a growing body of evidence has emerged, illustrating the need to arrive at a better recognition of children and young people at risk for mental health problems, in order to develop more effective prevention programs and therapeutic strategies.

A prerequisite to reach that goal is the co-operation between specialist mental health services and the schools where deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adolescents are educated: from special schools for the deaf to regular schools, which include hearing, impaired children. The effort to work together more intensively is the main subject of this pre-conference meeting.

Target groups

Target groups are deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing mental health and school professionals interested in working with deaf and hard-of-hearing children and young people, such as teachers, psychiatrists, other physicians, psychologists, orthopedagogues, therapists, psycholinguists, social workers, policymakers and others professionals interested in this specialised field.

Main topics

During the pre-conference, the following main topics will be addressed:

prevalence of emotional and behavioural problems among deaf and severely hard-of-hearing children and youth; clinical implications of research data
adult outcome of children and adolescents with mental health problems
dealing with problem behaviour at school: discussing difficult cases
early detection of problem behaviour at school; identifying the children at risk
prevention: promoting well-being and decreasing the risk of emotional and behavioural problems at school
organising school based mental health services: screening, assessment and intervention programs, providing consultation projects etc.
co-operation between parents, teachers and mental health professionals

Congress language and translation

The official language of the pre-conference will be English. International sign language translation will be available during the pre-conference. Participants who use other languages can bring their own interpreter.

Program format

Plenary lectures [6 to 8] by leading international professionals

in the field.

Parallel workshops Discussion.

Time schedule July 17th	Activity
09.15 - 10.00	Arrival and registration
10.00 - 10.05	Introduction
10.05 - 10.35	Plenary
10.35 - 11.05	Plenary
11.05 - 11.35	Pause
11.35 - 12.05	Plenary
12.05 - 12.35	Plenary
12.35 - 13.05	Plenary
13.05 - 14.15	Lunch break
14.15 - 14.45	Plenary
14.50 - 15.20	Parallel workshops
15.20 - 15.45	Pause
15.45 - 16.15	Parallel workshops
16.20 - 17.20	Forum discussion
17.20 - 17.30	Closing

The following experts will contribute to the conference:
Ms. Mandy Barker (UK), MS. Katrien DeBreuck (Be), Dr. Margaret Davison (UK), Ms. Nynke Dethmers (Neth), Prof. Dr. Jan van Dijk, Theo van Eldik PhD (Neth), Ms. Maria Gascon-Ramos PhD (Sp), Dr. Tiejo van Gent (Neth), Ms. Kerstin Heiling PhD, Dr. Peter Hindley (UK), Ms. Rosie Hitchen (UK), Javier Munoz (Sp), Gerald van Rijsewijk (Neth), Ms. Angela Saunders (US), Dr. Ines Sleeboom (Neth), Dr. Johan Wilterdink (Neth), Ms. Maria Wisnet (Ger)

The definite program will be send in the last week of June.

Last call for papers:

We invite you to submit an abstract for one of the parallel workshop sessions (20 min + 10 min discussion) on examples of (the development of) school based mental health programs or the discussion of clinical case material.

Procedure for applications:

Abstracts must be received by 17 June 2005 by e-mail.

Send to vlivia@robertfleury.nl

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