Adolescents with deafness: a review of self-esteem and its components

Adolescence is an extremely challenging and difficult age for individuals. Notably, adolescents with deafness face greater challenges as their communication skills and access to information, especially the information regarding their social world are limited. Moreover, stereotyped and biased attitudes lead them to focus more on their deafness than their own identities as teenagers. Therefore, in this article, we reviewed self-esteem and its components in the lives of adolescents with deafness.
According to our review of published articles, various factors might affect the development of self-esteem in adolescents with deafness, including parents’ choices about their children’s hearing device, choice of educational setting, mode of communication, the relationship of adolescents with deafness with their parents, having a supporting peer group, presence or absence of other disabilities, willingness to search for the etiology of their disease, and so on.
Collecting information regarding self-identity, self-esteem, and psychosocial issues of adolescents with deafness should be included in their educational programs so that their mental health shaped appropriately and their transition from adolescence to adulthood facilitated and psychosocial issues prevented. The transition from adolescence to adulthood is more complex in deaf and hard of hearing people, and requires special attention.