North Wales MS and Chair of Senedd’s Cross-Party Group on Deaf Issues, Mark Isherwood MS, has called on the Welsh Government to recognise the mental health needs of Deaf people and to include them in the Welsh Government’s new Mental Health Strategy.
Speaking in yesterday’s Business Statement, Mr Isherwood said Deaf people are twice as likely to experience a mental health problem than hearing populations and expressed concern that Wales is the only UK country without a Deaf mental health service.
Calling for a Welsh Government Statement by the Minister for Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Senedd Chamber on the inclusion of Deaf people in the 10-year Mental Health Strategy for Wales, he said:
“Yesterday, the All Wales Deaf Mental Health and Wellbeing Group - a group of Deaf and hearing professionals and charities - wrote to the Minister, saying they're ‘keen to ensure that Deaf people in Wales are really and truly part of the new Mental Health Strategy for Wales’.
“Wales is ‘the only UK country without a Deaf mental health service, and yet Deaf people are twice as likely to experience a mental health problem than hearing populations’.
“They met as a group with you and other Ministers in October 2022, and have been told on several occasions to ‘wait for the new Mental Health Strategy’. But, at this point, they ‘are nervous that Deaf people may be left behind, which has happened so many times before’.
“Finally, ‘during the consultation phase of the draft Mental Health Strategy, Deaf people in Wales were not identified as a marginalised group’, and during the Minister's Statement on Mental Health and Wellbeing here in Plenary on 8th October, ‘there was no mention about deaf people's mental health’.
“They therefore urge the Minister to ‘check the Mental Health Strategy’ accordingly. And this, again, is such a serious matter, that it merits a Statement by the Minister to the full Senedd accordingly. I'd be grateful if you could seek to facilitate both those oral statements to the full Senedd.”
Responding, the Trefnydd (Business Manager), Jane Hutt MS, said:
“I think I can assure you, but I know that the Minister for Mental Health and Well-being will also want to respond positively to the call for the inclusion of deaf people in the new Mental Health Strategy. It is an opportunity, as we work very much as we did in the disability rights taskforce, for co-production, and I'm sure that that will be the way forward in terms of the new Mental Health Strategy.”