Associate professor gives address at the Deaf Culture Festival

Dr. Cathy Chovaz, Associate professor in the Department of Psychology at King’s University College and Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University gave the keynote talk at the Deaf Culture Festival held at Bergen, Norway. She presented at the conference accompanied by Angela Core, ASL interpreter in the Academic Dean’s Office.

This year’s conference held August 24-27, 2017 was the 50th annual event with 875 people attending from Norway and other parts of Europe over the three days.

Dr. Chovaz’s keynote address entitled “Life Stories – Mental Health and Deafness” was attended by 300 people including psychiatrists, psychologists, clinicians and members of the deaf community.

“Culturally deaf people remain marginalized universally on many levels including mental health care. By using case histories of my deaf patients, my lecture sought to highlight barriers and factors contributing to a higher prevalence of mental health disorders as well as best practices in assessment, diagnosis and treatment,” says Dr. Chovaz.

Dr. Chovaz’s research and scholarly interests involve mental health functioning of deaf and hard of hearing children in Ontario, American Sign Language interpreters and mental health settings and deaf children and autism spectrum disorder. At King’s she frequently teaches courses on child psychopathology, and mental health and deafness.

Visit King’s Centre of Deaf Education & Accessibility Forum.