o Bethany Storro: Pity or punishment?
o Watch for signs of depression
Did Bethany Storro’s lifelong hearing problems add to the instability that led her to burn her face with drain cleaner, and, according to police, fabricate an attack by an acid-flinging black woman?
There is evidence in some studies that hearing loss may lead to depression. But experts say more research needs to be done on the subject.
“What she’s done is pretty extreme,” said Jacqui Metzger, a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington and clinical social worker specializing in psychotherapy for adults who have hearing loss. “This sounds like a woman who really has other issues. I assume she was crying out for help.”
Put another way: The question, then, can’t be answered yet, but Metzger and other hearing-loss experts have suggested some possible factors to consider while trying to understand Storro.
First, a series of questions are necessary to develop a more complete picture, Metzger said. “What kind of support did she have? What was her home life like? What was her schooling like?”
Her face covered in bandages, Storro said during a press conference just days after the fictional attack that she contracted spinal meningitis twice as a child, and the disease robbed her of most of her hearing. She read reporters’ lips as they asked questions inside a conference room at the Oregon Burn Center at Portland’s Legacy Emanuel Medical Center.
The Northwest School for Hearing-Impaired Children in Seattle focuses on developing listening and speech skills. Dr. Peggy Mayer is the school’s director of curriculum and teacher training.
Among hearing-impaired communities, being deaf is not viewed as a disability, Mayer said. She acknowledged, though, a so-called “barrier” exists between the deaf and hearing communities and that can cause difficulty communicating.
“It can be, depending on her support, isolating,” said Mayer, employing a word, “isolating,” that was also used by Metzger.
Amid the unknowns, the experts said the likelihood Storro’s hearing problems compounded other issues that led to her self-inflicted facial injuries isn’t much of a stretch. “It might be an exacerbating factor,” Mayer said.
Among the more prominent of the limited research on the connection between hearing loss and depression is a 2007 study by doctors in the United Kingdom and published online in the journal “Annals of General Psychiatry.”
The results of the study by doctors Oliver Turner, Kirsten Windfuhr and Navneet Kapur were summed up: “Little evidence was found to suggest that risk factors for suicide in deaf people differed systematically from those in the general population. However, studies did report higher levels of depression and higher levels of perceived risk among deaf individuals than hearing control groups.”
The authors of the report wrote that there’s a “significant gap in our understanding of suicide in deaf populations” and further research is needed.
A local expert at Washington State Center for Childhood Deafness and Hearing Loss doesn’t see a connection between hearing loss and depression.
“There’s depression like any other sector of the population,” said Rick Hauan, the Vancouver school’s superintendent. “From a kid perspective, we don’t experience children having depression any more frequently.”
Jessica Sullivan, an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Speech and Hearing, said the possible linking of hearing impairment with depression is difficult to study because of the added communication hurdle.
“For a while, there was, in the ’70s, testing that quickly labeled hearing-impaired people as (mentally) handicapped,” Sullivan said. “It’s hard to assess certain things when there’s an issue with oral language.”
She said, too, that the long-term psychological effects of hearing impairment must be looked at on a “case-by-case” level not conducive to drawing broad conclusions.
Like students without difficulties hearing, middle school can be a tough time for hearing-impaired students, Sullivan said.
“They don’t want to wear their hearing aids,” she said. “They don’t want anything to make them different. Some kids are a little bit better at coping, rolling with the punches. Others are not as easily as adaptive.”
Storro’s ability to accept her hearing loss would be key to determining its long-term effect on her, she said.
“Did she say, ‘It’s OK that I have hearing loss. I’m going to tell you what my needs are,’” Sullivan wondered.
Bob Albrecht: 360-735-4522; bob.albrecht@columbian.com.
