- CULTURAL
VIEWS
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- In our culture,
hearing loss has been viewed as something of a stigma.
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- Part of the
reason few people with hearing loss get help is that we simply
don't talk about it.
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- It's a sign
of advancing age. Yet, like impaired vision, it is one of the
most common health problems in the U.S. as well as worldwide.
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- Unlike impaired
vision, hearing loss is often made fun of.
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- People with
hearing loss often have to deal with the perception that their
intelligence or grasp on reality is unsound, simply because they
don't hear something correctly.
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- The analogy
to impaired vision is important, because hearing loss is such
a similar phenomenon. The way both hearing loss and vision impairment
are diagnosed (by a doctor or a technician), treated (with hardware
that compensates for the loss) and dispensed (by trained clinicians,
typically outside the “medical” sphere) is strikingly
similar.
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- Yet eyeglasses
are free of stigma--indeed, they're a fashion statement--while
hearing instruments continue to be seen as undesirable. One reason
is that people understand the physiology behind poor eyesight
more clearly than that of poor hearing. Another reason is that
eyeglasses have been around a lot longer. But it's only a matter
of time before hearing instuments catch up.
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- That shift is
now taking place, as an ever-younger group of people experience
hearing loss and seek treatment. These changing demographics
are helping to bring a very mainstream complaint into the popular
dialogue.
Click
here to see common myths about hearing loss.
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