Learn how untreated hearing loss can affect mental health, and how to stay connected with the people and things that you love. Read more.
Want to learn more about the connection between hearing loss and mental health?
Watch this short video hosted by Hearing Solution Centers’ Wendy Young, a master’s prepared mental health nurse, who explains the important role hearing care plays in preventing these mental health concerns.
Does Hearing Loss Affect Mental Health?
Yes, untreated hearing loss can affect mental health. Most age-related hearing loss is a progressive condition, meaning that it doesn’t happen all at once. Slowly over time, people will lose their ability to hear certain frequencies while others remain intact.
This gradual loss of hearing can be deceiving, causing many people to not realize they’re losing their ability to hear. What they will often notice, however, is how difficult certain activities have become.
Loud environments, like noisy restaurants for example, suddenly become stressful, as the ability to distinguish between voices and background noise becomes harder and harder.
Clearly hearing higher frequency voices — particularly those of women and children — often becomes strenuous, even leading to accusations of mumbling, or frequently having to ask people to repeat themselves.
And as hearing becomes more difficult in loud environments, the brain must work harder to process and interpret information, which increases a person’s feelings of tiredness and fatigue.
Cumulatively, these situations can have an enormous impact on a person’s mental well-being.
What Mental Effects Can Hearing Loss Have?
Anxiety and Embarrassment
Many people, whether or not they know they have a hearing loss, can feel quite embarrassed by having to ask people over and over again to repeat themselves in conversations. This can also lead to awkward misunderstandings that leave people feeling ashamed and less willing to enjoy social situations.
Additionally, people will often feel embarrassed after having received a hearing loss diagnosis, due to perceived social stigmas associated with hearing loss and hearing loss technology.
The fact of the matter is that hearing loss is a natural, common occurrence, and that today’s hearing loss technology is more comfortable, more discreet, and more effective than ever before.
Social Isolation
When hearing loss goes untreated, people will often isolate themselves from the people and activities that they love. Social situations become overwhelming due to speech-in-noise difficulties, and people choose to shut themselves in, which only increases their feelings of loneliness.
An additional unfortunate side effect of social isolation is that it also accelerates a person’s hearing loss, as it limits their exposure to a wider range of sounds.
What’s more, social isolation and hearing loss are also linked to even more adverse health consequences, including “mortality, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and depression.”
However, people who regularly wear properly fit hearing devices report not only a rediscovery of missing sounds, but also a renewed ability to engage with the world around them, living happier, more active lives.
Sleep Issues
Hearing loss and other hearing issues, like tinnitus, can also be disruptive to a person’s regular sleep cycle.
Continuous sleep issues can have a profound impact on a person’s mental health, as well as their physical health, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and feelings of depression.
Despite these risks, today’s hearing technology includes devices that can be programmed to combat the effects of tinnitus.
Many hearing care providers, like the team at Hearing Solution Centers, can also provide tinnitus counseling to patients to help them more effectively cope with and manage their tinnitus, helping to improve sleep and overall well-being.
Depression
People with untreated hearing loss are often at a higher risk of developing feelings of depression, whether they’re due to increased social isolation or due to difficulty coping with the hearing loss itself.
Many will grow concerned by how their hearing loss might progress or a perceived loss of independence and the realities of aging.
The more that we can create awareness of how common age-related hearing loss is and how important it is to regularly see a hearing care provider, the better job we can do in normalizing hearing aids as something as common and helpful as eyeglasses or other prescriptive devices.
Cognitive Decline
For several years now, experts have observed that there’s a link between untreated hearing loss and cognitive decline.
The brain is forced to work harder to interpret sounds, causing fatigue that can lead to social isolation, and that social isolation then causes a person to experience fewer sounds, causing those parts of the brain to atrophy.
When hearing loss goes untreated, it accelerates cognition issues and can also increase a person’s risk for conditions such as Alzheimer’s.
Early intervention — regular hearing checkups, properly fit hearing technology, and an active social life — can help preserve a person’s hearing health and their cognitive health. We recommend that people age 55 and above get their hearing tested once per year.
Ready to learn how you can help yourself or a loved one hear and feel their very best? Hearing Solution Centers is here to help! Contact us today to schedule your consultation!