Any impairment in hearing leads to frustrations and misunderstandings. Social life of the person gets disturbed. Hearing loss need not be due to birth defect, it can be due to various reasons and may manifest in later years also. To be able to hear is one of the most important aspects of life so any problem in hearing is a type of disability. Hearing loss can now be easily corrected with medical and surgical interventions. Read on to know more about the impact of hearing loss.
Hearing loss is also known as hearing impairment. It is felt when one or more than one part of the ear or both the ears get affected. A person suffering from hearing loss may not be able to hearing most of the sounds; especially the ones having a lower volume and might not even get to hear anything at all. The literal meaning of impairment is that the tool or the organ is not functioning as it ought to, or it is improper.
There can be a wide array of reasons that can lead to hearing loss. If the statistical data is consulted, it would be interesting to note that three in every thousand babies born, suffer from hearing impairment. It can be partial or total. Basically, hearing loss happens to be one of the most common birth defects. This problem can manifest itself evening the later years and in order to understand how hearing loss actually takes place, it is necessary to get a clear idea on how the human ear works.
Although it has been repeatedly mentioned that hearing loss can be caused by a number of factors, it has got a lot to do with lifestyle too. Although it is vital to get this clear that there cannot be generalized conditions in this aspect. Some of the noticeable facts are:
It has been observed that fluctuation in hearing faculty, especially with sounds belonging to the higher frequency can be a problem with people above the age of twenty.
One out of every five people gets affected by hearing loss by the time they reach 55.
Amongst the industrial population, maximum people get affected by hearing loss. A concentrated study reveals that most of these factors that cause hearing loss could have been well prevented through adequate care.
Amongst the present day college graduates, about 15% of them suffer a degree of hearing loss that is greater than their parents.
In this population, the most common cause leading to hearing loss is persistent listening to loud music.
Over 40 million people residing in America suffer from hearing loss
If you take the situation in America, more than two million kids are below 18 years of age who are suffering from hearing loss.
One-third of the American population belonging to the age group 65-74, and half of those who are above 85 are known to suffer from form of hearing impairment or the other.
Over 40% of the people who are suffering from hearing loss are below 65 years old.
Amongst the population using hearing aids, just 50% of them are regular users and actually compounds the problem.
Hearing loss is a chronic disability just after high blood pressure and arthritis.
Impact of Hearing Loss
Moderate to acute and even a low intensity hearing loss can have a major impact on human life. This is because communication becomes extremely difficult and if the person cannot hear the high frequency sounds, he may not hear the consonants like f, t, s and z. the good thing is that the vowels can be heard normally. So people end up hearing the wrong things as they can hear only partially.
This leads to immense frustration and misunderstandings. The individual can even stand on the brink of marital discord apart from the fact the he tends to withdraw from social activities and falls into a depressed state.
But the quality of life can improve by a great degree through medical and surgical treatment and the person can feel a lot of positive difference through the use of hearing aids.
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My son has speech problems and it was quite late when i found out the cause behind this. He had a hearing problem. His hearing was only 30%. so he had problem in hearing due to which there was affect on speech development.
Hearing loss has a greater impact on kids as it leads to slow down the communication. In younger kids, speech development is delayed due to hearing loss.
Hearing loss is very common but few people realize it within time. It is as common in kids as in adults. Awareness can help in prevention in many cases.
