Retrospective Basic Parent-Child Communication Difficulties and Risk of Depression in Deaf Adults.
Deaf adults who recall trouble talking with their same-sex parent are eight times more likely to be depressed—so ask about family communication history.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Kushalnagar et al. (2017) asked deaf adults to look back on talking with their parents. They used a survey to link past communication trouble with current depression signs.
The team focused on same-sex parent pairs. They wanted to see if hard childhood talks predicted later mental-health risk.
What they found
People who said they often misunderstood their same-sex parent had eight times higher odds of adult depression. The link was strong and clear.
The finding held after ruling out other factors. Early family communication gaps left a lasting mark.
How this fits with other research
Madhesh et al. (2025) extends this work to teens. They found even mild depression lowers deaf Saudi high-schoolers’ quality of school life. Together the studies show deaf well-being is fragile across ages.
Lin et al. (2011) used a similar survey design with immigrant children. Both papers tie poor parent-child talk to later depression, but the 2011 study looked at current family climate while Poorna looked back in time.
Almusawi et al. (2021) show deaf adults still face communication gaps, now with health information. The three papers form a chain: early home trouble, later mood risk, ongoing access barriers.
Why it matters
When a deaf client lands on your caseload, ask one quick question: “As a kid, how easy was it to understand Mom or Dad?” If the answer is “not easy,” flag for depression screening and teach family-friendly communication tactics like signed key phrases or visual schedules. Early repair can break the eight-fold risk.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add one question about childhood parent communication to your intake form for deaf clients.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper describes the relationship between retrospective communication difficulties and current depressive symptomatology. A total of 143 deaf/hard-of-hearing late adolescents and adults (64 % White; 55 % female) completed questionnaires related to parent communication, language history and current psychological functioning. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the likelihood of having depression that is associated with understanding parents' communication after controlling for gender, hearing level, and language history. Significant odds ratio indicated that the difficulties in understanding basic communication with parents increased the odds of depression symptomatology. The odds ratio indicates that when holding all other variables constant, the odds of reporting depression were at least 8 times higher for those who reported being able to understand some to none of what the same-sex parent said. For the different-gender parent, only the mother's communication with the male individual was associated with depression. Although our study findings suggest that DHH men and women with history of communication difficulties at home are at risk for depression in adulthood, they do not provide information on the causal mechanisms linking communication difficulties early in life and depression later in life. Greater attention should be given to promoting healthy communication between DHH girls and their mothers as well as DHH boys and their fathers, which might reduce the impact on later emergence of depression in the DHH individual.
Journal of developmental and physical disabilities, 2017 · doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.2008.03218