Tag: First Draft

Ryann Block

Professor Kitana Ananda

ENG 103.0905

                               Mental Health Concerns Within The Deaf Community.

        A person who is deaf is at a higher risk of developing emotional and psychological problems than an individual who is not deaf. Most of the time the problems start in the individual’s home. These problems may affect their everyday life activities and may even cause communication delays and or barriers. This paper will examine mental health diagnoses as they correlate to adults and children who are deaf.

       Mental health diagnoses for the deaf has been associated with bipolar disorder, depression, and ADHD.  An individual with a mental health disability often needs specialized treatment and or therapy. Society thinks special treatment is not needed and expresses persons who are deaf are capable of just “dealing” with their disability. People who are Deaf are unsure of treatment services available and or feel isolated or embarrassed in seeking services.

       This paper will discuss mental health issues in the deaf community and the importance of community awareness for this group.  While both papers examined issues between mental health in deaf individuals’, they differ in their research which includes different treatment methods and procedures. The first paper concentrates on children who are deaf and their families as well as the key factors behind the supports they receive.

          The second paper focused on comparing adults who are deaf and hearing individuals. It to determine their difference between their mental status for each group. Peter A. Hindley’s paper Mental Health Problems in Deaf Children examined how “deafness comes in many forms”. (Hindley p.114) He also examined how clinicians whom work with children who are deaf need to be understanding to make sure they provide the appropriate services.

                Peter A. Hindley, discussed the benefits of using British Sign Language as a technique (BSL) for children who are deaf. BSL is a “language distinct from English, with its own syntax and lexicon are different from English” (Hindley p.115). BSL is also different from American Sign Language (ASL) because it is its own language. BSL provides children who are deaf with a better way to communicate. Part of the study had shown techniques to be effective by practicing points such as gathering a group of children using BSL and informing and teaching their parents.

             Peter A. Hindley felt like the parents would be able to communicate and try to understand “why” and “how” (For instance: “Why do you feel this way? How can I help?). Hindley stresses that parents play a major role in their children’s life meaning everything that the parents do can negatively affect the child. It was advised that parents should have open communication so their child doesn’t grow up to be disoriented. Hindley wanted to prove early deafness as well as pointing out the issues which cause the social, cultural, psychological and medical aspects.

          On a social, cultural and psychological perspective, it was stated that “parents respond in many different ways to the knowledge that their child is deaf. Their response is shaped by their previous experience of deafness” (Hindley p.115).  The majority of these parents didn’t know how to accept their child’s deafness. Many had different views on it and didn’t know how to go about it although they knew that there would’ve been a possibility that the child will grow up to be deaf.

        Marit H. Kvam, Mitchell Loeb paper Mental Health in Deaf Adults: Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression Among Hearing and Deaf Individuals paper reveals mental health issues among deaf adults compared to adults who can hear. There were studies conducted based on the Norwegian postal survey and one among the general population (Kvam p.1-2)(1995-1997), as well as the deaf generation. In addition, analysis discovered that the deaf showed more symptoms of mental health problems than the hearing.

             Norwegian study examined the “interrelation between psychological problems, social activity and social network” (2007 Kvam p. 1). The results displayed that the deaf were two-four times higher in distress than hearing people.  Many deaf people were gathered in this study and they noticed once they lost their hearing it affected their everyday life activities, such as not being able to socialize with others, and by having suicidal moments because there was a communication barrier.

           It was also discovered that hard of hearing, deaf adults and children were either a victim of physical, sexual or emotional abuse than hearing people because they do not have the mental capacity to express what’s going on or what happened. Usually, a hearing individual may be capable of saying something and the deaf individual may have a hard time because of the lack of interpreters or overall a person who may know their language.  

           When an individual experience hearing loss at a young age its likely for them to experience the quality of life than a hearing person. (Knutson, Johnson, Sullivan p.2 ). As a result, there’s a higher chance that mental health disorders occur because so many individuals bottle up emotions inside and are not able to express themselves. Peter A.Hindley, didn’t specify on how many people were tested in this study but instead described some factors which lead to mental health-related issues. He stressed how important it is to recognize the depth of the issue.

           On a medical perspective children, mental health is believed to be caused by the central nervous system(CNS). Medically, deaf children are at a higher risk of CNS than hearing children by 15% compared to children with other related issues such as cerebral palsy or being an epileptic. (Hindley p. 115) Hindley believes that in the medical world its vital to carefully evaluate children because there may be many misdiagnosed.

             In response to the social, cultural and psychological perspective on deafness, it states that parents respond in many ways and it’s important that families should have an option on what services they would need to address their child being deaf. One would question, should the child be exposed to sign language in their early stages of hearing loss or should they have the option to go with a cochlear implant? There were many issues on this topic so that’s why he wanted to create an intervention to separate the groups and see which techniques or method is effective to conclude with his study.  It seemed like he did make a valid point and/or statement that whether you’re an interpreter for ASL or BSL, social worker, clinicians working with deaf children with mental health issues then you must be aware of their needs and you should also be sensitive about it. For example, dig into the route of the child and try to see why he/she are feeling the way that they’re or what is it exactly is making them act a certain way (are they hyper?  are they sad?)  He urges that deaf children should indeed seek out and families should support them.

 

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The rise of pollution within our seas
With an ever more so growing human population, it’s likely noticeable to see more and more trash accumulate within time. The question we all ask is where does all this trash go? What is being done with it? Since the human population is always at an increase, organizations that are usually dealt with regulating garbage as well as respected governments across the world have no idea to succumb to a problem that is ruining our ecosystem.
We can see that within the new century that plastics and other different types of garbage are being handled. Of course, the main idea is to keep it at a garbage dump or to usually bury it underground, however there is so much garbage that it accumulated way more than expected. What’s the other alternate solution to throw out garbage? Different alternatives to dealing with plastics and waste is that we either bury it or take it out into space, however both of these methods would be highly expensive and timid to do so. The idea is to toss them out literally in the middle of the ocean, thinking that nothing will happen, no harm will be done and everyone can go about their daily lives without worrying.
This problem of plastic being in the ocean is becoming a major problem very quickly. It’s destroying wildlife, their habitat and the ecosystem as a whole. According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, this problem is deemed to be “One of the most serious emerging threats to marine biodiversity”. The plastics that seep into the ocean tend to be eaten by the wildlife triggering a chain of events to happen. Either other fish eat the fish that ate the plastic, or we eat the wildlife that contained the plastic as well. This is highly beneficial for both us and the wildlife.
The chemicals contained within these plastics prove and have been shown to cause serious harm when consumed. Not only that, it takes a toll on the environment as well too. Because of these chemicals in the plastic, the ocean is littered and filled with all different types of plastic, including a major one, silicon. As mentioned within the last paragraph, once eaten, it’ll cause a chain within the ecosystem, possibly wiping out life within that particular region.
Seepage of nuclear waste is also another problem that’s being dealt with as we speak right now. Usually, if radioactive waste is released accidentally or even on purpose into an ecosystem, it can prove to be detrimental. Any exposure can lead to serious illnesses, cancer, mutations, etc. Radiation just doesn’t need to be from the waste, but it can be from the gas and liquids too. You’d usually see this from the gasses emitting from factories due to the concentration of what is burning. This can make a more widespread disaster onto the environment.
There are different types of management for the size and radioactivity of each waste. Some are usually disposed by land burials, engineered disposal vaults, etc. Most of the high level radioactive waste are usually kept under watch at nuclear power reactor sites. This isn’t only affecting life on land, but even in the sea as well.
Contamination can spread even faster in the ocean, causing plant and fish species to suffer. It can ruin the habitats, especially the coral reefs as well. This can cause a lot of wipeouts of fish species to drastically be on the rise in the future years to come. If that does become a major problem as to what it is right now, the ecosystem would collapse in time where all life in that area would either mutate or would die due to the chemical exposure. If the waste isn’t dealt with properly, the contamination won’t be able to be contained in a matter of time. This once again chains a cycle within the marine ecosystem that can wipe out a whole species or even life that was once around that area.
The quality of our ocean is becoming significantly worse every decade. This is why we see dead animals wash up on shore, including whales, fish and even birds that may have eaten other fish that have been contaminated or swallowed something harmful. The one problem as well is that at this point, with all the pollution in our water, it’ll take trillions of dollars to clean up. The problem has gotten so bad that people are literally just leaving this major problem unattended and would soon grow into a nightmare.
There is a major stretch of plastic, nuclear and municipal waste from a span from Japan to Hawaii, where all this buildup occurs. There is also a part within the Pacific Ocean that is so bad that it literally can form its own continent of garbage. All this waste will soon make way deeper into the ocean where it’ll be even harder to clean, harder to trace, and way more money now to deal with than earlier. People knows what it going on and they truly know where our waste is ending up, but no one isn’t doing anything to help as a community or anything. We are treating our planet as if it’s our own, when in reality we share it with the millions upon millions of creatures living here. We need to do our part as a civilization to help a cause that’ll soon make a huge indentation in our life.

 

 

John Adames

ENG 103

Prof.Kitana Ananda

12/4/17

Athletes vs. Politics

Have you ever seen athletes fight against Politics? Since around the 1940’s athletes and politics have crashed several of times. Now more than ever with National Football League Quarterback Colin Kaepernick sitting during the National Anthem, and many NFL players kneeling all season to fight against politics. Jackie Robinson was fighting for a chance to be the first African American to ever play in the Major League Baseball. Kaepernick was sitting during the National Anthem so he can fight alongside Black Lives Matter Movement. While the NFL were kneeling to protest against Donald Trump’s antics. In this essay I will prove how the power athletes have can change the world.

One of the biggest early encounters with sports against politics. The story of the first African American baseball player Jackie Roosevelt Robinson. During Jackie Robinson’s time in the MLB the Civil Rights Movement was going on. He did not only face the adversity of whites not liking him for being the first african american to play professionally but he also faced racism and stereotypes. In a quote from “Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball” by Laurie Collier Hillstrom it states “ Although that event is now considered a defining moment in the history of the game and an early triumph in the civil rights movement, Chandler’s decision was extremely controversial at the time. It angered not only the other team owners, but also many white baseball players, fans, and corporate sponsors.”This shows that even though every year on April 15, Jackie Robinson day is celebrated. We have came a long way because when he first became a Major League player he was not very liked and was seen as a threat. Another quote that  Laurie Collier Hillstrom says in her book is “Robinson expanded his involvement in the civil rights movement after his baseball career ended. He gave speeches and raised money to support the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), for instance, and organized an annual jazz concert to benefit various causes. Robinson attended the 1963 March on Washington, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.” This shows Jackie Robinson’s influenced the civil rights movement and was a big voice for the NAACP. As you can see Jackie Robinson and his number 42 has impacted not only politics but the world as well without Jackie Robinson we wouldn’t be talking about players like Willie Mays, Barry Bonds and David Ortiz.

Another big encounter that sports has had with politics. The story of Colin Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement versus the government and the NFL players association. Colin started this protest when during a NFL preseason game on August 14, 2016 while the National Anthem was being sung instead of getting up and putting his hand on his heart he sat on the bench. According to Mark Sandritter from SBNation.com Kapernick stated “I’m going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed. To me, this is something that has to change. When there’s significant change and I feel that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent, and this country is representing people the way that it’s supposed to, I’ll stand.” This shows how Kaepernick looked himself as leader and a spokesman for the victims of police brutality like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Gardner. Another quote that shows that Colin Kaepernick is still going through inequality is “Kaepernick has remained unemployed after he started a wave of social activism in the NFL by protesting issues of police brutality and inequality during the pre-game playing of the national anthem last season. Kaepernick filed a grievance against the league Oct. 15, claiming collusion by NFL owners.” This quote shows how ever since Kaepernick became a public figure for the Black Lives Matter movement nobody has wanted to sign him because they believe fans will protest against him. Before Colin Kaepernick decided to take a stand against the National Anthem and the flag I believe not a lot of people knew exactly who he was.

 

Bibliography

• Hillstrom, Laurie Collier. Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball. Omnigraphics, Inc., 2013.
• Sandritter, Mark. “All the Athletes Who Joined Kaepernick’s National Anthem Protest.”SBNation.com, SBNation.com, 11 Sept. 2016,    www.sbnation.com/2016/9/11/12869726/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest-seahawks-brandon-marshall-nfl.

 

After World War I, the United States went through a tough period were the whole country was being dominated by social discrimination, however what was surprising was that after the war, the quantity of immigrants entering the country decreased, specially because the demand for unskilled workers had gone down. In the 1920s the U.S created a law against mass immigration of the foreigners entering the country, such law led to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. A group that consisted of hardcore Whites who believed that foreigners from other regions and Blacks did not have a place in the United States and they would have their own ideas on how to combat this problem.
Sadly, The Congress supported the Klan’s efforts to minimize the proliferation of immigration through the enactment of the per centum limits. The major concerns of the KKK are shown in an article authored by Hiram Evans dubbed The Klan’s Fight for Americanism (1926). Putting the aspects into the wider historical context helps in understanding. The 1920’s were marked by nativism and fear of cultural erosion because the influence of the immigrants was felt in different states and this led to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan that aimed at restoring Nordicism.
The Klan’s Fight for Americanism as it is discussed by Hiram Evans shows the role played by the group in protecting what they called the “First Nations People” culture against the infiltration by other foreign investors that were going to ruin this culture . The Klan was formed as a protest against modernity that was experienced after the First World War. According to the author, most of the immigrants in the United States came from the European countries that were war-stricken (Shi and Tindall 184) and were in under recovery.
Since the United States did not participate in the First World War from the beginning. It only engaged Japan after the attack on the Pearl Harbor, unlike the other participants in the war including Germany, France, and Japan, the U.S did not suffer a massive economic loss (Shi and Tindall 184.) Instead, in the 1920s known as the “Roaring Twenties” the number of goods been made and sold by American Businesses had increased notably, this led individuals from other nations to target the United States to take advantage of the flourishing economic growth and therefore migrate to this country to have a job opportunity and have a chance to get a better life and this angered the klan even more .
The Ku Klux Klan began its activities in the South in states such as Delaware, Florida, Georgia and Maryland. However it was clear that this was happening because the South had a bigger black population than the Northern states due to the slavery that had been prevalent so the klan’s activities would have a bigger impact here. In 1900, the South was dominated by Protestantism and non-Catholics and they were not embraced for this. The Klan’s Fight against trade unionism (The Klan’s members controlled access to better-paying industrial jobs), Jews and Catholics, was an illustration of their efforts to maintain an original American culture (Shi and Tindall 184)
In his article The Klan’s Fight for Americanism, Evans is categorical that the Klan was against granting voting rights to people that they considered not real Americans, rights that were granted by the 15th Amendment enacted in 1869 which indicated that all the native-born American men had the right to vote. Therefore the klan sought to concentrate more in politics to make “the not real Americans” have a hard time participating in them.
In 1869, about 44% of the African-American men had been registered as voters, and as more Blacks held offices in the South this infuriated the Klan, and a form of voter suppression emerged. The second generation of the Klan opposed the voting rights by instilling fear among the Blacks. Therefore, by the end of First World War, the Klan saw an opportunity to once more demonstrate the White supremacy, by discriminating not only blacks this time, but also immigrants that were coming from many different countries. In addition, the Klan’s rebirth arose at a time where industrialization and urbanization were starting to grow rapidly, promoting the idea that all immigrants and blacks, were a threat to the society’s ideals.
The First Great Migration (1916–1930) increased the number of blacks in other states like Chicago, New York, St. Louis and Los Angeles. For instance, in Chicago, the percentage of the Blacks in the population rose by 600% (Shi and Tindall 186). Those who were opposed to the free movement of the Blacks and the establishment of their churches scaled up their efforts to intimidate them in their new locations.
The government saw the need to curb the massive movement of people into the country through the Immigration Act of 1917. The Klan’s idea was to retain the original American culture of civilization and literacy. According to the article authored by Evans, the Congress seemed to share the Klan’s sentiments and instituted the literacy test to bar those who could not write and read into the United States. Hiram W. Evans mentions “During the greater part of this period of agitation the so-called literacy test for aliens was the favorite weapon of the restrictionists, and all its widespread popularity appears to have been based quite largely on a belief, or at least a hope, that it would reduce to some extend the stream of “new” immigration” (The Klan’s Fight for Americanism, p. 186) This supported the intention to prevent importing unskilled labor and individuals who would swell the dependency rates