A Research On Identity And Mental Health Condition Of The Hearing-impaired Students

Identity is a relatively stable psychological process.It reflects that individuals or groups recognized and accepted their group characteristics.As a social marginal group, the deaf students have more serious adaptation problems.Although the identity is closely related to psychosocial development, it has long been neglected by domestic researchers. Currently,the research on deaf identity development has become a new hot spot among foreign countries.Although the special education in China paying attention to the psychological study of the hearing-impaired students, most studies stay in discussion the relationship between cognition and deaf, lacking of the quantitative research on psychosocial development, especially the identity which each hearing-impaired student can not avoid.The study includes two parts.First,we combed the relevant foreign literature and interviewed the domestic deaf students. On this basis, we complied an identity questionnaire of the hearing-impaired students. Testing shows that the reliability and validity are both well.meeting the psychometric requirements. Secondly,we used the identity questionnaire and Self-reporting inventory, measured 378 deaf students from different regions and schools. The purpose of this study is to survey the identity situation and its influencing factors,and further explore the relationship between identity and mental health condition. The results are as follows:1 There are four distinct stages of identity for the hearing-impaired students in China (hearing,immersion,bicultural and marginal). The deaf students'hearing and bicultural tendency is higher, and the marginal is the lowest.2 The immersion and marginal between different age have significant difference. As age development,the hearing first reduce and then rise,while the immersion rise at first and then reduce.The bicultural continue to drop, while the marginal continue to rise.3 There is significant difference between genders, parental hearing status, and among the hearing loss times, communication means, education forms and numbers of normal hearing friend in identity of the hearing-impaired students.4 In the four kinds of the hearing-impaired students, the individuals with typical hearing and marginal are in the worse mental health condition5 The hearing tendency have significant negative correlation with the overall level of mental health,somatization,obsessive-compulsiive,interpersonal sensitivity,depression,anxiety,hostility,phobia anxiety and other factor. The immersion have significant negative correlation with interpersonal sensitivity,depression anxiety and phobia anxiety.The marginal tendency have significant negative correlation with anxiety and depression.Only the bicultural tendency and mental health are not significantly correlated. 6 The hearing tendency of the hearing-impaired students is a significant predictor to the mental health condition. The more the deaf students tended to identity with the culturally hearing, the more serious psychological conditions.The immersion is a significant predictor to the anxiety. The more the deaf students tended to identity with the culturally deaf,the more serious psychological anxiety.