Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Deaf Suffer More Abuse

You are more likely to have been neglected or abused as a child if you are deaf or hard-of-hearing than if you are hearing. That's the finding of a new study out of the Rochester Institute of Technology. A survey of college students found:
  • 77% of those with a hearing loss reported some kind of maltreatment before the age of 16.
  • 49% of those with a hearing loss reported some kind of maltreatment before the age of 16.
Maltreatment was defined as physical or sexual abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect or emotional abuse. Read more about the study here.