Deaf Adult Consumers of Public Behavioral Health Services in Maryland: January 1, 2016 – January 1, 2018

The public behavioral health care system in the United States consists of a huge network that falls under the purview of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is an agency responsible for leading public health efforts to support behavioral health and reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness (SAMHSA, 2018). There are several centers under the purview of SAMHSA, including the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, the Center for Mental Health Services, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. These centers collect national behavioral health data, research, and evaluation information for practitioners, health promotion specialists, policymakers, and consumers. Each state has its own public behavioral health system that includes service provision, data collection, and information dissemination of mental health and substance use to the public. In Maryland, the Behavioral Health Administration (BHA), formerly known as the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene Administration, oversees statewide behavioral health services for Marylanders (Maryland Behavioral Health Administration, 2018). The Office of Adult Services and Special Needs Populations oversees the statewide planning, implementation, and monitoring of special populations. According to BHA, special populations include individuals who are homeless, deaf or hard of hearing, trauma survivors, incarcerated, and/or women. Beacon Health Options, a sub-contractor for BHA, administers and manages services for all individuals, including special populations, who have public medical assistance (MA) health insurance plans and who are uninsured but eligible for services. BHA in Maryland collects behavioral health data about consumers who receive MA or are uninsured by using the Outcomes Measurement System (OMS) interview. Up until this point, statewide data on deaf consumers was not available. In collaboration with researchers at Beacon Health Options and University of Maryland and by cross-referencing multiple state-level databases, data on deaf consumers were made available to the author with permission. The focus of this paper is to describe state-level outcomes of consumers who were identified as deaf. Literature Review Historically, service providers and researchers have not given deaf consumers equitable attention in the areas of behavioral health services despite indications that there are significant numbers of deaf individuals (Anderson, Craig, & Ziedonis, 2016; Crowe, 2017a; Matho