Parental Stress in Parents of Hearing Impaired Childrenwith Cochlear Implantation History: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Hearing Impairment (HI) is a sensorineural impairment that may be both acquired orinherent and can affect the mental health of parents of children with HI by its significantconsequences, like Parental Stress (PS). PS is a kind of stress that parents perceive following theirchildren's mental, physical, or developmental disturbances. However, therapeutic measures likeCochlear Implantation (CI) can fade away the mentioned consequences. Therefore, the present crosssectionalstudy was implemented with the aim of determining the prevalence of PS in parents ofchildren with HI that have CI history.Methods: Total ۶۰ parents of children with HI that have CI history participated in the present studyusing simple random sampling and considering the inclusion criteria. Accordingly, their PS wasevaluated using the “Questionnaire of Clinical and Demographic Information” and the “ParentingStress Index Fourth Edition Short Form (PSI-۴-SF). Consequently, in order to analyze the data, theSPSS version ۲۶ was used.Results: Most of the participants were female (۶۵.۵ %), housewives (۶۷.۳ %), economically poor(۵۹.۷%) and had bachelor’s degrees (۴۲.۰ %). Moreover, the mean age of parents, children with HIand the time elapsed since their CI were ۳۰.۸ years, ۶.۴ years and ۱.۷ years, respectively. Additionally,the PS in parents of children with HI that have CI history was relatively low (x̄ =۶۷.۳۱, p˂۰.۰۵).Ultimately, there was a significant correlation between the higher level of PS and being younger,female, divorced and economically poor (p˂۰.۰۵).Conclusion: According to the results, the level of PS in the parents of children with HI that have CIhistory was relatively low. Moreover, the prevalence and the severity of PS was different due to thevarious sociodemographic differences. According to the remarkable consequences of CI in reducingthe PS in parents, considering such therapeutic measures and removing the existing obstacles arerecommended.

کلیدواژه ها:

Parental Stress ، Hearing Impairment ، Children ، Cochlear Implantation