Childhood Hearing Impairment: How Do Parents Feel About It?
Keywords:
Hearing Impairment, Children, Parents Perception and AttitudeAbstract
Background: Hearing impairment or deafness is a major disabling condition worldwide. The etiology of hearing loss range from congenital to acquired, and includes common and preventable childhood infections like otitis media and meningoencephalitis. The morbidity and burden of hearing impairment on the children and their parents is enormous. This is because affected children have developmental delay in many domains including speech, cognition as well as behavioural and other aspects of psychosocial development. Early identification and effective treatment of hearing loss improves language, other forms of communication, and cognitive skills. This study was carried out to evaluate and ascertain the perception and attitude of parents of children with hearing impairment.
Method: This was a questionnaire based study of parents' perception and attitude about children with hearing impairment in the Port-Harcourt metropolis from 1st June 2011 to 31st May 2012.
Results: Thirty seven parents of children with hearing impairment were studied. The parents demonstrated different attitudes towards the children. Majority, 34(94.59%) of them felt sad, others expressed anger. Twenty seven (72.97%) felt hearing loss was due to punishment from the "gods" for an evil deed by a family member. The attitude and feelings of parents included sadness, self-blame and anger. Parents also believe that immediate cause is spiritual.
Conclusion: The public should be enlightened about common preventable causes so as to correct all negative attitudes about hearing loss/ impairment.
References
Murray CJL, Lopez, AD (eds.). The global burdenofdisease:acomprehensiveassessment of mortality and disability from diseases, injuries and risk factors in 1990 and projected to 2020. Cambridge, Harvard University Press (Global Burden of disease and Injury Series) 1996 Vol. 1.
SmithRJ,BaleJFJr,WhiteKR.Sensorineural hearing loss in children. Lancet 2005; 365:879.
RobsonCD.Congenitalhearingimpairment. Pediatr Radiol 2006; 36:309.
World Health Organization. World Health Report2001.Mentalhealth:NewUnderstanding, New Hope. Geneva, World Health Organization 2001. Www.who.int/whr.
Erenberg A, Lemons J, Sia C, Trunkel D, Ziring P. Newborn and infant hearing loss: detection and intervention. American Academy of Pediatrics. Task Force on Newborn and Infant Hearing, 1998- 1999. Pediatrics 1999; 103:527.
NorthernJL,DownsMP.Hearinginchildren, 4th ed, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore 1991.
Yoshinaga-Itano C, Sedey AL, Coulter DK, Mehl AL. Language of early- and later-identified children with hearing loss. Pediatrics 1998; 102:1161.
Downs MP, Yoshinaga-Itano C. The efficacy of early identification and intervention for children with hearing impairment. Pediatr Clin North Am 1999; 46:79.
Ijaduola GTA. Ancient area and believes in Causation of deafness J of Research in Ethno-Medicine 1986: 1; 22-25.
Martinson FD. Deafness in Africa proc. Xiith ORL world Congr. Budapest, Hungary 1981: 519-523.
MLA Style:"attitude."EncyclopædiaBritannica.EncyclopædiaBritannicaUltimateReferenceSuite.Chicago:Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011.
"Mortality and Burden of Disease Estimates for WHO Member States in 2002".
Pimperton H, Kennedy CR. The impact of early identification of permanent childhood hearing impairment on speech and language outcomes. Arch Dis Child 2012; 97:648.
IjaduolaGTA.Theproblemsoftheprofoundly Deaf Nigeria Child.Postgraduate Doctor-Africa, June 1983; 180 184.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2015 The Nigerian Health Journal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The Journal is owned, published and copyrighted by the Nigerian Medical Association, River state Branch. The copyright of papers published are vested in the journal and the publisher. In line with our open access policy and the Creative Commons Attribution License policy authors are allowed to share their work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.
The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
TNHJ also supports open access archiving of articles published in the journal after three months of publication. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g, in institutional repositories or on their website) within the stated period, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access). All requests for permission for open access archiving outside this period should be sent to the editor via email to editor@tnhjph.com.
