CHRIS BOUTTÉ: 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 wellbeing.
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 Rikki Poynter.
Alright, 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 Rikki's channel
and I had like... probably less than 100 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 that.
So, recently, within the last month or two, I saw Rikki,
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 Rikki Poynter. I was like, "I know her!"
So, we started chatting and then we started talking on Twitter
and I was like, "OK, cool. Yeah, let's do a collab".
I actually did a video over on Rikki'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 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.
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 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, edit it a little bit 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 Rikki, like, I'm glad I'm doing this collab
because she works with a 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, alright?
Anyways, I'll shut my mouth now and here is Rikki Poynter.
RIKKI POYNTER: Hello. My name is Rikki.
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, have 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,
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 born 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 grew up speaking English, which is why I sound so great,
you know, speaking English.
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 will 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
was 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 text.
Text 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 their 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 costs
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 fee,
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 time you're not gonna find a whole lot of deaf people
who grew up using ASL,
you're not gonna 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 in deaf schools that don't even know ASL.
Yeah, that's a thing.
So, that makes things complicated.
Trying to find somebody that speaks your language
because therapy isn't something, I imagine, that you really wanna mess up, you know?
And you wanna 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 out 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 to me,
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/disabled
is a lot of us are very unemployed or underemployed.
So for me, because I was never able to be successful
in getting a "normal people job".
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 all depends.
And deaf and disabled people are some pf 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 at prices,
it was anywhere from $80 to something over $100.
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 at 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, BetterHelp was a good option
and I know there's another text-based therapy thing,
I can't remember the name of it, but BetterHelp wasn't too bad,
and price was about $35 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 the 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 so expensive.
Chances are we can hardly afford the actual therapy appointment
and then having to pay,
gosh, what is it? $100 or $200 for an hour, I think,
I may be wrong, for an interpreter along with it?
Plus the gas if you gonna 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 will make things a whole lot easier and you know what?
In the future, I may try BetterHelp again.
I know there was that whole like scandal that happened with them,
but sometimes you kinda 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 the 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've possibly encouraged you all
to help us make some change.
Thank you for allowing me to take up your time
and I will you later, bye.
Back to Chris.
CHRIS BOUTTÉ: Alright. Thank you so, so, so much, Rikki,
for coming over and discussing this with everybody.
Like, with my channel, one of my main goals
is to spread awareness, alright?
And here's the thing, like dealing with mental health issues is a struggle.
It's a struggle already,
but, you know, what we learn from Rikki, and even I learned some more,
when you're deaf or even, you know, have another disability,
it 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 Rikki 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, alright?
Like, we need to make this stuff more accessible to everybody.
Also, if you are interested in the online therapy service
that Rikki discussed, BetterHelp,
I personally use BetterHelp and my therapist is amazing.
Tristan has been using BetterHelp longer than I have.
Her therapist is amazing.
So, BetterHelp also supports the channel.
So, there is 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 fairing,
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 can schedule one.
But everything we've been doing, like, so far, has just been through texts.
She texts me literally every single day.
Alright, and I will be doing a full review about my experience with BetterHelp
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, OK?
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 Rikki to come over on the channel
and discuss these things, alright?
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 discussed how to not feel so alone
when you're struggling with your mental health issues.
And once again, thank you so much, Rikki,
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 Rikki right now, alright?
She covers such a wide range of topics.
So, not only does she talk about, you know, 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, alright?
But anyways, again, don't forget to share this video
and if you liked 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 caption more of my videos!
(LAUGHTER)
Alright, 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 Rikki
by clicking or tapping right there, alright?
Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.
For more infomation >> Gov. Northam Refuses To Resign, Says He's Not In Racist Yearbook Photo | Sunday TODAY - Duration: 3:31. 
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