The Mental Health of Hearing Impaired Adults

Auditory system is one of the most important channels of communication and is the basis for speech communication, perception, and psychologic abilities are based on this system. Any impairment of the auditory system could impair these abilities. The present study was carried out to investigat mental profile of adults with hearing loss. In the current cross-sectional study, we surveyed psychologic information of 40 hearing impaired persons (average age: 27.85 years old) with hearing aid using SCL-90-R questionnaire and compared with 40 normal persons (average age: 27.52 years old). Participants were of both genders and had diploma degree. We observed significant statistical difference of mental health (psychoticism, phobic anxiety, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity, somatization, paranoid ideation, hostility, depression, and obsessive-compulsive) between hearing impaired and normal persons (P<0.05). The present study indicated much more mental health problems in hearing impaired persons compared with that in normal people. These results showed the importance of mental health assessment in the persons with hearing loss in addition to the other routine auditory evaluations.