Welcome to the Deaf Wellness Center!

Your first stop should be the News area of our website. There, you'll find the latest announcements regarding our clinical, research, and training activities, including new grants, upcoming lectures, and more. The News section is updated at least monthy so bookmark that page and visit often!

Many people contact us for copies of our publications or for copies of our Mental Health Interpreting Curriculum, our award-wining film, My Body, My Responsibility: A Health Education Video for Deaf Women or our two Dialectical Behavior Therapy film adaptations, including Opposite Action: An Adaptation from the Deaf Perspective and Practicing Radical Acceptance: An Adaptation from the Deaf Perspective. Or latest product is a book entitled Applications of Demand Control Schema in Interpreter Education. For further information about any of these products, contact Robert Pollard.

Click here for a map and directions to the DWC. Our telephone number is 585-275-6785 (voice or TTY) and our address is 300 Crittenden Blvd., Rochester, NY 14642. Our fax number is 585-273-1117.

After you've caught up on DWC news, we invite you to explore the links at the left to learn more about the DWC and our various activities. Each page has links (upper left) to our major website areas, plus sub-links (lower left) related to the unique area you are visiting. Or, see the many hyper links at the bottom of this page.

DWC Overview

The Deaf Wellness Center (DWC) is a program of the University of Rochester Medical Center, based in its Department of Psychiatry. The DWC staff engage in clinical services, teaching, and research activities that pertain to mental health, healthcare, sign language interpreting, and other topics that affect the lives of people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

The DWC was first "named" in 1999 but the staff and interns there have been providing mental health services and doing research and teaching since 1990. The DWC staff consists of psychologist Dr. Robert Pollard, who directs the DWC, psychologist Dr. Amanda O'Hearn, faculty sign language interpreter and researcher Robyn Dean, social worker Sharon Haynes, counselor Lori DeWindt and, every year, several interns from a variety of professional disciplines. All DWC staff members are fluent in sign language.

The DWC provides evaluation and psychotherapy services to individuals of any age, couples, and families. We also conducte psychiatric evaluations and provide consultation and forensic evaluation services to courts, governments, etc., on topics related to deafness, mental health, and healthcare. Several psychotherapy groups are also conducted at the DWC. Our psychotherapy groups are all-deaf and are conducted in sign language by our sign-fluent therapists. While most of our clients are deaf and use sign language, some are hard-of-hearing, oral deaf, or hearing people with family members. The DWC accepts all forms of health insurance and there is a sliding fee scale for persons with limited income. To schedule an appointment or discuss our services telephone the number above.

Because the DWC is part of the University of Rochester Medical Center, teaching and research are important activities. We teach our own DWC interns, who are becoming psychologists or interpreters and social workers. Our "Program for Deaf Trainees" is well-known throughout the US and in other countries, too, not only because we recruit deaf interns but also because our deaf interns work frequently with hearing patients (in partnership with sign language interpreters as necessary) at Strong Behavioral Health and Rochester Psychiatric Center. When our deaf interns graduate, they have skills and experience in providing mental health services to deaf and hearing people. The DWC faculty also teach medical students, psychiatry residents, sign language interpreters, and many other types of professionals and staff. We frequently travel throughout the US, and sometimes Europe, teaching and sharing our research findings.

The DWC has managed over $3.8 million in research and other project grants. We are one of the leading research sites in the US on the topics of deafness and mental health, and sign language interpreting. Our two largest grants are from the US Department of Education. The first is funding a five-year series of studies that deal with three topics: Dialectical Behavior Therapy (a popular type of psychotherapy), psychological testing, and training interpreters to work more effectively in mental health settings. The second is funding educational reforms in 15 interpreter training programs nationwide, based on our "Demand-Control Schema for Interpreting Work." Other projects are described in the research section of this website.

Research at the DWC has resulted in over 80 professional publications, the development of our "Strong Connections" videoconference based interpretering service for healthcare settings, a book and video entitled "Mental Health Interpreting: A Mentored Curriculum," and a number of films, including "My Body, My Responsibility: A Health Education Video for Deaf Women." This film features deaf actresses using sign language to discuss a variety of women's health issues with their doctors, including puberty, pregnancy, labor and deliver, preventing pregnancy, preventing and treating sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and being tested for HIV/AIDS. The film has English (audio) voice-overs and open captions so it is accessible to hearing and hard-of-hearing people as well. We are hopeful that families with deaf women, deaf education programs, deaf service agencies, and many hospitals and doctors' offices will use this film. We also have produced two Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills training films. To learn more about these products or place an order, call the DWC at 585-275-6785, voice or TTY.