In order to analyze the effect of adhesive material on the stress characteristics of the deformable mirror (DM) under thermo-mechanical coupling, we establish a DM model with adhesive material by the finite element method. We analyze and compare the effects of three typical adhesive materials on the stress distributions of the DM using the sequential coupling method, and discuss the variation law of the maximum stress of the DM for adhesive layers with different thicknesses. The results indicate that the characteristics and parameters of the adhesive material greatly affect the stress characteristics of the DM due to thermo-mechanical coupling in an actual DM system. The adhesive material has almost no effect on the stress distribution of the front surface of DM, as well as the peak-valley value of the surface shape, but has a significant influence on the stress distribution on the rear surface. In addition, the stress at the joint between the mirror and the pole is significantly increased. For different kinds of adhesive materials, the smaller the elastic modulus and the thermal expansion coefficient are, the smaller the stress on the DM is. Among the three typical adhesive materials, the stress on the DM glued with the amine-cured epoxy 5222 material is the largest, the stress on the DM glued with the phenolic epoxy resin T300 material is the smallest, and the stress on the DM glued with the phenolic epoxy resin 4221 material is between those of the two materials. In addition, the thickness of the adhesive layer directly affects the stress characteristics on the DM, whose maximum value decreases with the increase of the thickness of the adhesive layer, which means that in the process of the DM manufacturing, a thicker adhesive thickness should be chosen reasonably under the condition of effective controlling the produce of the bubble and other defects inside the adhesive layer.