Evaluating the Relation Between Mothers' Depression Level and Their Cochlear Implanted Children's Social Performance.

ABSTRACT

Since the child's sensorineural hearing loss and its negative consequences, including weak social skills, is one of the most challenging problems for parents and other family members, the main aim of the present study is to investigate if there is any probable relation between the cochlear implanted children's social performance and their mothers' depression level,in this cross-sectional observational analytic research, we implemented the Beck Depression Inventory version- II to evaluate the level of depression in 29 mothers of cochlear implanted children. Also, we assessed their children's social abilities through the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale. Finally, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out to find any probable relation between the mothers' depression level and their children's social performance. The mean difference was significant at the 0.05 level,results indicated no significant difference in the mean social performance of the children mothers encountered with mild or moderate degrees of depression. However, the mean social performance of the children with severely depressed mothers was significantly less than the others,severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss in children might cause various degrees of depression in mothers. Mothers who suffer from severe depression cannot effectively communicate with their children. Consequently, the child will not improve in social interaction well.