20/12/2023
Disability Awareness – Hearing Impairment
A disability can be defined as any injury, illness, or condition that makes it difficult for someone to do things that people without such an injury, illness, or condition can usually do.
A person who suffers from a disability can be said to be impaired, i.e. they are in a weakened state or condition.
For example, if a person is born with blindness in both eyes, their blindness is a disability they suffer from. They are therefore considered to be visually impaired.
Losing your ability to hear can put you at greater risk for developing mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression.
Reducing the psychological impact of hearing loss involves actively seeking medical treatment and finding emotional support.
What are the psychological effects of hearing loss?
Participating in everyday casual banter is not easy for those who don’t hear well. The individual might feel shame, awkwardness, and inadequacy because they’re not able to understand others or keep up with the discussion.
The inability to hear clearly can cause disorientation, leading the person to behave in socially unacceptable ways such as speaking out of turn—and this only heightens their embarrassment. Some might even experience paranoia and believe that others are talking about them.
Below are some other important ways in which hearing loss can influence mental health:
• Adults with hearing loss may become anxious about missing phone calls and alarms. They may worry about mishearing what others are saying to them or feel guilty about misunderstandings.
• The social exclusion and loneliness linked with hearing loss can predispose people to schizophrenia. This is thought to be caused by increased dopamine sensitivity.
• How does hearing loss affect the brain? The task of processing the sounds we hear helps our brain stay active. When you lose some or all of your hearing, the part of your brain that performs this task can atrophy (deteriorate). This can cause cognitive decline, which includes symptoms such as difficulty thinking and concentrating.
• Since hearing loss affects balance, it can cause avoidance of physical activity, which in turn may lead to depression.
• People who hear normally often assume that speaking loudly and repeating words is an appropriate response to an older adult with deafness. However, this behavior reinforces misconceptions that seniors with hearing loss are "slow." Internalizing this notion can intensify the emotional distress of losing one’s hearing.
Losing the ability to hear represents a significant loss. And like with any loss, it’s often followed by a grieving period. The grieving process may involve feelings like anger, resentment, sadness, and depression, followed ultimately by a sense of acceptance.
Hyperactivity:
Some people with hearing loss may appear to be constantly on the go. They may have trouble sitting still, or they may seem fidgety and restless. This behaviour is often a result of frustration, as these people may feel like they’re missing out on what’s going on around them.
Fatigue:
On the other end of the spectrum, some children with hearing loss may become fatigued easily. This is often because they have to work harder to listen, and they may not get enough rest if they’re constantly straining to hear.
Fatigue can lead to behaviour problems, so it’s important to make sure your child is getting enough sleep and taking breaks throughout the day.
Harassment:
Harassment is when someone is offended, shamed, or humiliated due to their disability.
Discrimination arising from disability:
This happens when someone is treated unfairly, not because of their disability itself, but because of something that’s a direct result of their disability.
Bullying can be:
• verbal
• emotional
• physical
• online (cyberbullying).
• verbal: name-calling, insulting, teasing, ridiculing
• emotional/indirect: ignoring or deliberately excluding, spreading rumours or nasty stories, turning friends against the individual, laughing at them or talking about them behind their back, taking, hiding or damaging their personal belongings, , using a feature of the individuals disability to bully them, e.g. deliberately making loud noises near a deaf person who is known to find loud noises unpleasant, creeping up on them from behind to scare them, deliberately making noise in their ear.
• physical: any physical contact which would hurt such as hitting, kicking, pinching, pushing, shoving, tripping up, pulling out hearing aids
• manipulation/controlling behaviour: using the child’s vulnerability as a way of controlling them or making them do something the bully wants them to do
Bullying:
Bullying is a topic that most people are familiar with. Chances are you’ve been exposed to it at some point in your life. Bullying can happen anywhere, at school, work, home, or in the community.
There are various types of bullying, including physical, verbal/emotional, and cyber bullying. It occurs when one intentionally and repetitively tries to bring someone down through means of verbal or physical attacks, humiliation, embarrassment, and so on.
Many deaf and hard of hearing individuals have experienced their fair share of bullying as it pertains to their deafness and hearing loss.
I have personally experienced physical, verbal bullying and a lot of it did pertain to my deafness. I was often called “deaf and dumb,” too sensitive and hard work, made fun of because I was the “deaf person in the room who couldn’t hear,” and left out because it was easier to exclude than to accommodate.
The list goes on. I was a victim of bullying for so long and decided I didn’t want to be a victim anymore.