CONSEQUENCES OF HEARINGDEAFNESS DISABILITIES FOR LATE DEAFENED ADULTS

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CONSEQUENCES OF HEARING/DEAFNESS DISABILITIES FOR
LATE DEAFENED ADULTS

• Margaret Robertson
• Chairperson, Deafness Forum of Australia

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Focus of presentation

• People who have acquired a hearing loss as
  adults and maintain their lives in the hearing
  community, relying on a combination of whatever
  residual hearing they have retained and visual
  communication, frequently assisted by
  technological devices including hearing aids and
  cochlear implants

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The Experience of Acquired Hearing Loss

• Invariably a negative one involving loss
• Losses need to be grieved and with progressive
  loss this will be a recurring process
• Stage of life will determine specific loses to be
  accommodated

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Outcomes determined by access to resources

• Personal resources
• Socially conferred resources
• Technology
• Counselling and advice
• Supportive family and friendship network
• Lack of discrimination in immediate environment
• Lack of discrimination in community

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An invisible condition without external evidence
such as signing, places people who are hard of
hearing in limbo. They do not belong to deaf
communities and they are often estranged from the
hearing community of which they had been a part.

• (Rocky Stone 1987)

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Though endowed with a passionate and lively
temperament and even fond of the distraction
offered by society, I was soon obliged to seclude
myself and live in solitudeif I appear in
company I am overcome by a burning anxiety, a
fear that I am running the risk of letting people
know my conditionsuch experiences have almost
made me despair, and I was on the point of
putting an end to my life the only thing that
held me back was my art.

• Beethoven Heiligenstadt Document, 1802

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Consequences

• Self esteem and identity
• Unless I have to, I will not let the deaf cat
  out of the bag (Wright 1990)
• Social incompetence is consistently felt to be a
  more tolerable negative identity than that of
  being viewed as a hearing impaired person (Hetu
  1996)

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Consequences

• Emotional Health
• Psychological disturbance was evident in a
  hearing impaired sample at a rate four times that
  of the general population (Thomas 1984)
• HI elderly report significantly more depressive
  symptoms, lower self-efficacy, more feelings of
  lonelinessthan normally hearing peers (Kramer
  et al 2000)

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Consequences

• Physical Health
• Fatigue
• Accidents failure to hear warnings/alarms
• Depression-related suicide
• Elevation of stress hormones leading to disease
• Depression and social isolation as causes of
  heart disease

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Consequences

• Relationships and Family Life
• Deafness is essentially interactive. It is an
  experience which is necessarily shared with
  others. The closer the relationship, the
  stronger the impact of hearing difficulties
  (Hetu, Jones Getty 1993)
• I lost my hearing then I lost my wife. She
  doesnt realize what it is like for me
  (Harvey 2000)

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Consequences

• Employment and Careers
• Workers constantly fear dismissal, stigmatization
  and loss of potential career advancement
• Stress in job search and interview process
• Necessary accommodations typically not made by
  employers
• Staying in unsatisfying jobs, leaving jobs or
  retiring early are frequent results of hearing
  loss
  (Stika, 1997)

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Consequences

• Employment and Careers (cont)
• Deafened adults are disadvantaged with regard
  to education and access to paid employment,
  particularly those with more advanced hearing
  loss. Those who have jobs may not enjoy the same
  level of career progression as those who can
  hear. Educational and employment disadvantage
  results in adverse economic position for deafened
  adults. Access to medical and rehabilitation
  services greatly enhanced the likelihood of
  deafened people retaining employment
  (Hogan et al 1998)

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Implications For Us

• Affordable access to technology
• Technology is a necessary but not a sufficient
  rehabilitative intervention
• Rehabilitation must address identity, emotional
  and health problems
• Better information and education about assistive
  listening devices required

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Implications for Us (cont)

• Awareness campaigns needed to reduce
  discrimination and stigmatization
• Prominent hearing impaired people in the
  community must co-operate
• MUCH more advocacy needed to improve
  accommodations for hearing loss in the Australian
  environment
• Self-help organisations need to become more
  attractive and useful to hearing impaired people