Introduction

This booklet is for:

1. People with a recent severe/profound hearing loss (newly deafened people), to provide readily available help and information during their rehabilitation

2. Family and friends of deafened people to show ways in which they can provide valuable help, support and encouragement.

3. All people, with or without hearing loss, to give an appreciation and understanding of the problems and needs arising from hearing loss.

“Hearing loss” covers many different conditions and its effects can be easily misunderstood by those who have not experienced it. Even some health professionals (social workers, doctors and nurses, for example) can misinterpret an individual's communication needs. Its consequences follow three main routes:

Deaf people (sometimes termed “Culturally Deaf” and given a capital “D”) are those who have never had much useful hearing, so using the spoken word will have been a major problem even before starting their education. Many have risen to that challenge magnificently, using British Sign Language (BSL) as their normal first language but the needs of people using BSL are largely outside the scope of this booklet. It is estimated that there are about 50,000* users of BSL in the UK.

Deafened people are those who have used the spoken language for communication but then have lost most or all of their natural hearing. If the loss is sudden, the sudden inability to communicate by speech can be traumatic and its effects very difficult to deal with, particularly where employment, partners and young children are involved. Most newly deafened people however, learn to adjust and cope adequately in time, particularly with help from hearing aids, cochlear implants and lip reading. One to one conversations in a good environment become possible but beyond those conditions, communication by speech will always be severely limited. The terminology Acquired Profound Hearing Loss or APHL is sometimes used for this condition.

It is estimated that in the UK there may be over 80,000* deafened people aged 16 to 60 and possibly around 560,000* aged over 60 who have more gradually reached the same condition as they have got older.

Also in the category of deafened people may be those who lost their hearing at an early age but have learned to communicate with words and speech. The availability of cochlear implants for children is increasing the numbers who fall into this group.

Hard of Hearing people are those who have a mild/moderate hearing loss, causing words or parts of conversations to be missed. This can generally be compensated for by the use of hearing aids, available from the National Health Service, or from a private dispenser. Hard of hearing people whose hearing is getting worse will begin to find the same communication problems as deafened people but with more time to adjust, they will normally find it less distressing. This type of hearing loss is often a natural part of the ageing process.

What next?

Severe/profound loss of hearing brings many new problems that need to be tackled. Initially you are cut off from all the sounds you recognise and have become familiar with so communication problems will almost certainly be your main concern. Your role at home or in your work will almost certainly be high on your list as well. You may feel you are alone in the world with all these problems but you are not. Many others have faced those problems and have had much the same thoughts.

The plea heard from many newly deafened people is: Why didn't someone tell me? Why did it take so long to find out about lipreading, textphones, subtitles and all the things that would make coping with my hearing loss less difficult?

This booklet is an attempt to respond to those concerns. It has been compiled entirely by deafened people who want to share the solutions they have found.

* The numbers of Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people shown above are derived from figures given by RNID. The number of deafened people is obtained by using the RNID total with severe/profound hearing loss and subtracting the number who use BSL as their first language.

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