If you love someone with hearing loss who refuses to seek help for changes in their hearing, it can be worse than frustrating. It can be heartbreaking. Sadly, the stigma attached to hearing loss continues to plague certain people in our society. But sharing the good news about hearing aids and hearing health can help encourage those we love to seek help for this entirely treatable condition.
How can you help someone with hearing loss begin to recognize their condition and get help? Well pointing out the positive impact hearing technologies can have on their lives is a good place to start. Amazingly enough, hearing aids can improve all of the following:
• Increases Income—People are better able to communicate with hearing aids thereby appearing to be more reliable, aware, and in control. An increase in ability to hear can thus increase income.
• Strengthen Relationships—People are less likely to feel dismissed or ignored when their partner is using a hearing aid.
• Reduce Discrimination—People who use hearing aids are less likely to experience the discrimination, the hurtful assumptions about intelligence or about ability to pay attention, that can come with miscommunication.
• Reduce Frustration—Hearing aids help communication, promote understanding, and make it easier for people to navigate in a hearing world.
• Reduce Depression—Self-isolation due to hearing loss leads to depression.Hearing aids reduce the need for self-isolation and have been shown to improve social interaction and general happiness levels.
• Reduce Anxiety- People who use hearing aids are less likely to experience the hearing loss social anxiety common among people who fear trying to communicate when they can't hear as well as others.
• Reduce Paranoia—Not hearing well can result in common misconceptions about safety, social acceptance, and leave people feeling dismissed. Hearing aids return awareness and help reduce false assumptions.
• Reduce Self-Criticism—Hearing aids increase the ability to hear and communicate helping eliminate self-reproach when incorrect responses are given in a social or work situation.
The positive benefits of hearing aids are important and essential for those with hearing loss to understand, but so are the advancements in hearing technologies. Too often people cling to old views of hearing aids and fail to realize how the technologies have improved in the last few years. Today's hearing aids can connect to directly to GPS, computers, and cell phones. They are discreet and can even be place deep inside the ear canal. Here are a few other facts about today's hearing aids your loved one might not know.
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