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Sign language interpreters in mental health settings face extreme linguistic and cultural difficulties in interpreting basic, everyday language used in these settings. This is particularly true when deaf clients have limited English proficiency, which often requires interpreters to use expansion techniques in order to render messages successfully. To examine how diagnostics may be affected by interpretation, Brauer (1993), Montoya et aL (2001), and Steinberg, Lipton, Eckhardt, Goldstein, and Sullivan (1998) translated two widely used psychological screening instruments into American Sign Language (ASL). The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Diagnostic Interview Schedule-IV (DIS-IV) were selected for translation, and data from the three studies are presented and discussed. Their implications in terms of the expectations and stresses placed on interpreters are described within a framework of demand and control theory. Finally, sections of the Code of Ethics of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RED) are examined relative to both the issue of confidentiality and what the interpreter's contribution should be in mental health settings.
Interpreters play a critical role in the provision of mental health services to the deaf (Reisman, Scanlon, & Kemp, 1977; Vetri, 1993; Williams, 1993). Interpreters are essential because few mental health professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers are able to sign (Pollard, 1998).
Not only are interpreters vital professionals in the mental health field, but the task they face is far more difficult than most people realize, including mental health professionals and their patients.
Interpreting between English and American Sign Language (ASL) presents specific linguistic difficulties for interpreters (Brauer, 1993; Gerber, 1977; Montoya et al., 2001; Steinberg, Lipton, Eckhardt, Goldstein, & Sullivan, 1998). ASL is rooted in Deaf culture, that is, the life experiences of deaf people (Dean & Pollard, 2001).
Even though some concepts are more easily and more vividly expressed in ASL than in English, deaf people historically have been largely excluded from psychiatry and psychology as well as other professional fields such as law and medicine. Thus, the terminologies of these fields have not yet evolved in ASL (Dean & Pollard, 2001). Hence, there are often no concise signs for the words used in psychology or psychiatry. For example, the term self-esteem cannot be used with undereducated deaf individuals unless the meaning of...