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Download our latest Information Sheet - 14 Mental Health, Deafness and Hearing Loss

Action on Hearing Loss has discovered that a significant percentage of people with hearing loss faced problems when trying to use these kinds of services.

Recent research carried out by the organisation - formerly known as the RNID - found that:

• 35% experienced difficulty communicating with their GP or practice nurse
• 15% avoid going to see their GP because of communication problems with this proportion doubling among British Sign Language (BSL) users
• 35% of the deaf and hard of hearing had been left unclear about their condition because of communication problems with their GP or practice nurse
• 24% of patients missed appointments because of poor communication including not being able to hear staff calling out their name

The findings raise the issue of how mental health problems are detected amongst deaf people - especially at an early stage - and how they are referred to appropriate mental health services.

Mental health services can be made more accessible to people with hearing loss through various means and you can find out more about how you can help from a professional perspective by reading our latest Information Sheet 14.

The Sheet outlines everything from communication tips through to helping make services more accessible for the hard of hearing and we'll be expanding on these subjects with blog posts next week.

Each of our Information Sheets have been developed to provide valuable information, training and support tools on primary care mental health in Wales and can be downloaded from our Information Sheets page.

If you have any questions about Information Sheet 14 or any other queries please contact our Project Manager Lesley Hills via email at lhills@rcgp.org.uk or on 029 2050 4516.

A leading mental health campaign is helping to put an end to the myths and social stigma surrounding mental health by asking people to share their experiences and personal stories online.

Time to Change Wales is a campaign aimed at ending mental health stigma and discrimination within Wales and has set up a Blogs & Stories section devoted to sharing your insights on mental health issues.

Each blog post centres on someone's personal accounts of their mental health experiences and are a great way to find out about living with often poorly understood mental health problems.

So far a long list of bloggers have offered insights on subjects as wide-ranging as anorexia, depression and personality disorders and even included leading politicians from each of the main political parties.

The idea is part of the Time to Change Wales call to get people to challenge mental health discrimination by simply talking about mental illness and having an open conversation about mental health.

Whether you have a mental health problem or not, you can help end the stigma surrounding the subject right now by reading the posts or following the campaign via its Facebook or Twitter feeds and sharing the stories with your friends and colleagues.

If you'd like to write a blog post please email Time to Change Wales at info@timetochangewales.org.uk.

Download our latest Information Sheet - 14 Mental Health, Deafness and Hearing Loss

There are 534,000 people in Wales with some form of hearing loss and Information Sheet 14 provides professional advice, guidance and support on the impact of hearing loss on mental health.

People with hearing loss are at an increased risk of mental health problems including anxiety, depression and poor self-esteem.

By 2031 the number of people with hearing problems is set to grow to 725,000 so it is a subject which GPs and primacy care practitioners across the country really need to understand.

This latest Information Sheet outlines everything from communication tips through to helping make services more accessible and useful contact details.

Like all our Information Sheets this latest document aims to help raise awareness about and improve mental health services across the country.

Each of our sheets have been developed to provide valuable information, training and support tools on primary care mental health in Wales.

Their publication comes under the set objectives of our Gold Standard Project which has set the goal of providing good communication on mental health issues .

We have a range of other Information Sheets which are all available to download and view on and from our Information Sheets page.

If you have any questions about Information Sheet 14 or trouble viewing or downloading it please contact our Project Manager Lesley Hills via email at lhills@rcgp.org.uk or on 029 2050 4516.