Disclosure of interest
The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.
12th August 2024: digital purchasing is currently unavailable on Cambridge Core. Due to recent technical disruption affecting our publishing operation, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2020
People with deaf blindness are a vulnerable group concerning mental health problems. Due to their constraints in orientation, mobility, access to information and communication they often suffer from a lack of interpersonal relationships and accessibility to health care.
To assess the prevalence of mental disorders in patients with deaf blindness and exam associations with forms of communication.
A retrospective data evaluation of all outpatient charts of patients treated between 2000–2013 in a specialized outpatient unit that provides primary care for all deaf people for the whole catchment area of Upper Austria was conducted. Data were analysed regarding the degree of visual and hearing impairment and the presence of a mental disorder.
Forty-seven of 1500 patients were identified as deaf blind including 12 suffering from Usher Syndrome. Of those 29 (61.7%) were at least once diagnosed with a mental disorder, most frequently with a mood disorder (MD) (F30–F39) in 40.4%; an anxiety, stress-related, somatoform disorders (AD) (F40–F49) in 12.8% and a schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders (F20–F29) in 10.6%. Deaf blind patients suffered compared to deaf patients more often from a MD (40.4% vs.11.3%) however less often from a AD (12.8% vs. 32.6%). No significant association between the form of communication and being diagnosed with a mental disorder could be found.
Patients with deaf blindness suffer to a high extend from mental disorders, especially MDs. It is of utmost importance to reduce the burden of this population and improve access to specialized services to diminish isolation as major risk factor.
The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.
Comments
No Comments have been published for this article.