A Comparison Between the Mothers of Cochlear Implanted Children and Mothers of Children with Hearing Aid in the Level of Depression, Anxiety and Stress
Seyed Basir Hashemi1 and Leila Monshizadeh2*

1Department of Otolaryngology, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran.

2Speech and Language Pathologist, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran.

Abstract: Considerable evidence suggests that parenting stress affects parent-child relationships. Although, some of the parents of hearing impaired children do not show symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, these problems are highly seen among others and it may have negative impact on their child. There for, the main aim of this study is to evaluate the level of depression, anxiety and stress in mothers of deaf and cochlear implanted children. Two groups of mothers whose children were between 5-8 years old were compared by depression, anxiety, stress scale (DASS-21) . After gathering the data statistical analysis was done through multi variate analysis of variances (MANOVA). According to test results of DASS-21 scale, mothers of hearing aid children reported more depression, anxiety and stress than the mothers of cochlear implanted children. In addition, child’s age was a negative predictor of parental stress. Cochlear implantation decreases the level of depression, anxiety and stress in mothers of cochlear implanted children. However, the mothers of hearing aid children significantly show the symptoms of psychological problems. This finding has been confirmed by different researches. For example a study in 2008(1) explored the correlates of parenting stress in parents of deaf children. Cochlear implantation plays an important role in improvement of the psychological parameters in mothers of hearing loss children.

Keywords: Depression; Cochlear implant; Anxiety; Stress; Hearing aid

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