Hearing Impairment Associated With Depression in US Adults, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005-2010

Abstract

IMPORTANCE Depression among hearing impaired US adults has not been studied previously. OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence of and risk factors for depression among adults with hearing loss. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Adults aged 18 years or older (N = 18 318) who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2005–2010, a nationally representative sample. INTERVENTIONS Multistage probability sampling of US population. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Depression, assessed by the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) scale, and hearing impairment (HI), assessed by self-report and audiometric examination for adults aged 70 years or older. RESULTS The prevalence of moderate to severe depression (PHQ-9 score, ≥10) was 4.9% for individuals reporting excellent hearing, 7.1% for those with good hearing, and 11.4% for participants who reported a little trouble or greater HI. Using excellent hearing as the reference, after adjusting for all covariates, multivariate odds ratios (ORs) for depression were 1.4 (95% CI, 1.1–1.8) for good hearing, 1.7 (1.3–2.2) for a little trouble, 2.4 (1.7–3.2) for moderate trouble, 1.5 (0.9–2.6) for a lot of trouble, and 0.6 (0.1–2.6) for deaf. Moderate HI (defined by better ear pure-tone average of hearing thresholds at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz within the range 35- to 49-dB hearing level) was significantly associated with depression among older women (OR, 3.9; 95% CI, 1.3–11.3), after adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, lifestyle characteristics, and selected health conditions. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE After accounting for health conditions and other factors, including trouble seeing, self-reported HI and audiometrically determined HI were significantly associated with depression, particularly in women. Health care professionals should be aware of an increased risk for depression among adults with hearing loss.

Audiologist-patient communication profiles in hearing rehabilitation appointments

“…It is encouraging that psychosocial talk was a focus of one quarter of the history taking phases observed in the current study, given that psychosocial talk is often not a focus of physician-patient interactions in primary health care [14,[30][31][32]. However, given that adults with acquired hearing loss typically attend an audiology appointment because they are experiencing communication difficulties [17,33] and thus may have experienced changes to their lifestyle (e.g., withdrawing from social situations) and/or general well-being [34][35][36][37][38][39], one would expect a greater proportion of audiology appointments to begin with psychosocial interaction.…”

Hearing Loss Health Care for Older Adults

“…Hearing loss is independently associated with mortality, 5 poorer cognitive function, 6 -8 incident dementia, 9,10 depression, 11,12 and physical functioning. [13][14][15] The impact of hearing loss on healthy aging translates into significant financial burdens on the health care system.…”

Time is of the essence in speech perception! : Get it fast, or think about it

“…The main consequence of hearing loss is an obvious difficulty in clearly perceiving auditory speech signals. Research has also shown that hearing loss is associated with cognitive decline (Lin et al, 2013;Rönnberg et al, 2011;Wong, Yu, Chan, & Tong, 2014), structural changes in the brain (Boyen, Langers, de Kleine, & van Dijk, 2013;Eckert, Cute, Vaden, Kuchinsky, & Dubno, 2012;Lin et al, 2014;Peelle, Troiani, Grossman, & Wingfield, 2011), mental health problems such as depression (e.g., Li et al, 2014) and social isolation (e.g., Weinstein & Ventry, 1982).…”