 I've had a lot and I mean a lot of you asked me to make some videos about dealing with mental health issues as well as a disability so that's why in this video I brought along a very special guest. What is up everybody this is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is all about mental health and what I like to do typically is pull different topics from the youtube community to try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being something else I like to do is get other youtubers onto my channel to discuss different mental health topics so if you're into that make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell so yes I have brought on the wonderful the amazing ricky pointer all right so before I pass before I pass the mic onto her just a quick story when I first started this channel I did a lot of research I wanted to see who else out there was talking about mental health right and I actually came across Ricky's channel and I had like probably less than a hundred subscribers when I first found her and I was like this is really cool you know because she talks about a wide range of topics and all of that so recently within the last month or two I saw Ricky I can't remember if she like tagged me in a tweet or commented on one of my videos well I'm like oh snap that's Ricky pointer I was like I know her so we started chatting and then we started talking on Twitter and I was like okay cool yeah let's do a collab I actually did a video over on Ricky's channel that will be linked at the end of this video and in the info card and I made a video for her channel talking about dealing with you know the the the feeling of being alone like nobody understands so make sure that you go check that out over on her channel and subscribe while you're at it so personally I always try to add captions in all of my videos um I'm trying to do a better job of it too like just so you guys know when you guys support the channel even if it's just by watching my videos or when you're like you know buying like my books or you're supporting the channel over on Patreon I'm trying to get you know captions paid for now because typically I use the auto-generated YouTube ones I go in there I edit it a little but I don't spend a ton of time so what I've actually been doing with some of the money that I'm making from the channel is paying for captions because I know a lot of you appreciate that I know some of you who are deaf like you appreciate that so I'm really trying my best to caption more videos by the way if anybody watching this if you're interested in captioning videos let me know down in the comments below or if you want to translate them into other languages whatever it is because mental health is a global issue but anyways I'll shut up about that but Ricky like I'm glad I'm doing this collab because she works for the company who actually captions videos so this video is going to be fully captioned but I wanted to bring her on because she is deaf she's been struggling with it pretty much her whole life and she wants to talk about you know the struggles of getting mental health help when you are deaf or disabled all right anyways I'll shut my mouth now and here is Ricky Pointer hello my name is Ricky as you probably already know because I've likely already been introduced this is my cat Libby and I don't know how long she's gonna be here but she decided to say hi for once in a video I guess because this is a special occasion I am a youtuber who is deaf has chronic pain and fatigue and on my channel I talk about deaf awareness disability related things mental health etc etc and on the occasion you might see my deaf demon Bob come out because at the age of 11 and I was possessed by a deaf demon named Bob and I'm just kidding that is a joke that we have on the channel that just gives you an example of what goes on over there so I want to thank Chris very much for allowing me to come on his channel and talk about being deaf and the lack of mental health resources more specifically therapy just to kind of make this a somewhat shorter video I very much appreciate the fact that Chris is letting an actual deaf person talk about this sort of thing and hello so I have been depressed for a very very long time I grew up dealing with child abuse and just loneliness in general because if you look at the statistic a lot of deaf kids are you know most of us are going to hearing families and a lot of the times we don't get access to a deaf community to deaf culture ASL etc etc and it can get very isolating not only that but there were just other things that were really not deaf related that contributed to my mental health issues I also have a lot of anger management problems so after many many years of trying to deal with it I started dealing with it in a way by talking about it on YouTube and then eventually I was thinking man I really should start therapy in some way shape or form but the thing is it's very difficult to find proper therapy one of the main reasons is just the fact that there's not really a whole lot of accessibility in the therapy world so yes I speak English I was I grew up mainstreamed which means that I grew up in a public education I I grew up speaking English which is why I sound so great you know speaking English I I've been speaking it since I was three or four when I had better hearing back then right but the thing is despite the fact that I can speak English pretty well I can't understand it very well and I can't hear it very well so trying to find somebody that would provide that sort of accommodation is very difficult now I didn't know ASL growing up however I have started learning it a few years ago and while I can get a pretty good you know basic conversation and I have a feeling that trying to find someone fluent in ASL is a little bit difficult or at least you know trying to understand the mental health vocabulary right I tried a free trial of BetterHelp a couple of months ago because I figured that the best way for me to be able to get some sort of therapy was tech techs is the best way for me to understand anything I always have people type things down if I have an interview with anybody I have them type the questions down on skype and then if they want they can read it out loud you know just for the sake of the audio portion right so when I tried BetterHelp I thought this was kind of fantastic you know we can use the instant message feature however there was the financial cost and I'll get more into that in a second but then you think about people who are fluent in ASL right or insert sign language of your country because not all countries use ASL and I went into some sort of like psychologist database and I was trying to find somebody who lived close by that was fluent in ASL practically nobody at least not close by the closest I found was Asheville which is about an hour and a half away an hour and a half to two hours driving all that time and driving for that much time back and forth on top of paying a traditional therapist's beat just sounds draining and you know what that's the case for a lot of people a lot of deaf people because here's the thing ASL and English are two completely different languages so a lot of the times you're not going to find a whole lot of deaf people who grew up using ASL you're not going to find them to be very fluent in English because the education here just isn't all that great there's a lot of deaf schools that have been closed down and a lot of hearing teachers and deaf schools that don't even know ASL yeah that that's a thing so that makes things a complicated trying to find somebody that speaks your language because therapy isn't something I imagine that you really want to mess up you know and you want to be able to understand everything that's going on so that you can really get the help that you need now I did do a little bit of research when I was trying to find other therapists and I saw that there were a few deaf based therapists there are two that I remember seeing I can't remember the names of them right now but it was a deaf therapy service and all the therapists were deaf however when I was doing a little bit more research and trying to find reviews I found that the reviews were not so great so you know the whole breaking confidentiality policies and whatnot so that was something that I wasn't really interested in because I didn't want that to happen I mean nobody really wants that to happen that's a bummer right there the other thing is the cost therapy is expensive as heck right and the thing with being deaf slash disabled is a lot of us are very unemployed or underemployed so for me because I was never able to be successful and getting a normal people job I hate I hate using that but a mainstream job if you will you know like something in retail and you know whatnot I've never been successful at that so I'm self-employed with youtube and twitch etc etc and that income is all wishy washy it's it all depends and deaf and disabled people are some of the most unemployed people in the world and yes you may get SSI and some other stuff but you're only allowed a certain amount in your bank account and once you possibly go over that you're out you it's not gonna work out and when I was looking up prices it was anywhere from 80 to something over a hundred dollars that is really expensive especially if you wanted to go you know every week or something if I were to go to the person I found in Asheville I would probably only be able to go once a month because the gas would be expensive and then the appointment would be expensive right so better help was a good option and I know there's another text-based therapy thing I can't remember the name of it but better help wasn't too bad in price what is it about 35 dollars a week and there might be a couple of other options but even that can be very very expensive for a deaf or disabled person and also while I'm back on the accommodation thing because I just remembered I had also emailed a couple of local people a couple of local therapists and I would ask them hey what's your accommodation like so would you be able to write things down for me like I can meet you halfway I will talk to you out loud and then you can write to me or type on the laptop or whatever or would you be able to find an ASL interpreter because insert Americans with disabilities act thing here and every response that I got if I got a response a lot of people didn't reply to me including the ASL fluent one in Asheville I would get a lot of yeah you would have to pay for your own interpreter and then they would never reply at all about the typing part even if I replied back to them trying to get some sort of clarification on that and hiring an interpreter is also very expensive and that's quite the burden to put on the disabled person especially when or the deaf person especially when you have the ADA in place a couple of people said that that's not a requirement when it comes to ADA like yes you would have to provide one yourself but regardless of what that little specific part is it's just it's so expensive chances are we can hardly afford the actual therapy appointment and then having to pay gosh what is it 100-200 dollars for an hour I think I may be wrong for an interpreter along with it plus the gas if you're gotta go driving it's so expensive so yeah the whole depression percentage among deaf and disabled people is so so high not only because of ableism but because of the lack of mental health proper mental health resources for deaf people I do wish that therapy was much more readily accessible because that would make things a whole lot easier and you know what in the future I may try better help again I know there was that whole like scandal that happened with them but sometimes you kind of just have to go with a certain evil if you will if a company is evil it's just like with disabled people and Amazon a lot of people aren't liking Amazon lately but when you're disabled you kind of have to go with what you can get right so Amazon is a tremendous help for those who find that the outside world is not very accessible in terms of you know mobility aids and whatnot so what can we do to try to solve this problem a whole lot of education that's why I make videos over on my channel I try to talk to people and let things be known I've had a couple of people who want to be therapists right who have told me wow I had no idea about this and I want to make a change you know I want to be able to I want to learn ASL so that way if I do have deaf patients who want to come into therapy I would be able to help them out or you know they may offer to do the whole typing thing should deaf patient be proficient in English like me that's one thing to do and also instead of just making videos or writing articles actually sending out emails or letters to these sorts of businesses these therapists and telling them hey this is what you should probably consider doing because I think it would be a tremendous help it would be a tremendous help but you know yeah so yeah I thought that that was a very interesting topic to talk about because it's something that really needs to be talked about and again Chris thank you so so much for allowing me to be able to come talk about this because yeah I could talk about it on my channel right but it's really good to talk about it to a completely different audience because chances are you probably knew less than what my audience does because they've been around me for a while so I hope you all learned something new I hope that I possibly encourage you all to help us make some change thank you for allowing me to take up your time yeah I will see you later bye back to Chris all right thank you so so so much Ricky for coming over and discussing this with everybody like with my channel one of my main goals is to spread awareness all right and here's the thing like dealing with mental health issues is a struggle it's a struggle already but you know what we learned from Ricky and even I learned some more when you're deaf or even you know have another disability and makes it that much more difficult so please do me a favor and share this video share this video on the chance that it might you know land in you know the lap of a therapist or somebody else who has the ability to make some changes maybe therapists don't even know how much of an issue that this is kind of like what Ricky was saying in the video she has people who are pursuing a career in mental health and this gives them something additional to think about all right like we need to make this stuff more accessible to everybody also if you are interested in the online therapy service that Ricky discussed better help I personally use better help and my therapist is amazing Tristan has been using better help longer than I have her therapist is amazing so better help also supports this channel so there is a an affiliate link down in the description below so if you want to check it out they do have a sliding scale so ask them about affordable theory but you can like even if you're not somebody who's deaf like you can text them I haven't even had like a phone call conversation with the therapist yet but I could schedule one but everything we've been doing like so far has just been through text she texts me literally every single day all right and I will be doing a full review about my experience with better help because of all the nonsense that happened but anyways if you want to check that out go down in the description below but also in the description below if you are somebody who's deaf like feel free to join our Facebook group as well as our discord server okay this way you can type and chat and get support we have you know people with disabilities in both the Facebook group and discord server and it's always beneficial to link up with other people who struggle with disabilities because like me I don't know everything and I haven't been through everything this is why I get people like Ricky to come over on the channel and discuss these things all right so you might be able to find people who you can connect with by joining the discord server or the Facebook group and don't forget this video is part of a collaboration so make sure you go check out the video I did over on her channel where I discuss how to not feel so alone when you're struggling with your mental health issues and once again thank you so much Ricky for coming over and being a guest on my channel and you guys like all of you all of you if you're watching this video you need to do me a favor go subscribe to Ricky right now all right she covers such a wide range of topics so not only does she talk about you know um being deaf or being disabled she talks a ton about mental health and not only depression but she talks about going through trauma she talks about going through abuse and all of that I know I have a very large female audience and I know so many of you can benefit from the videos over on her channel so make sure you subscribe to her it'll be linked up in the info card down in the description down in the pinned comments and at the end screen all right but anyways again don't forget to share this video and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon you're all amazing and you're helping me catching more of my videos all right if you would like to support the channel and get some extra perks and stuff click or tap right there and you can also subscribe to Ricky by clicking or tapping right there all right thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time