From Monday 14th until Sunday 20th May, the country raises awareness of hearing loss and deafness with a host of articles and activities for Deaf Awareness Week.
Around 1 in 6 of the population has some form of hearing loss– that’s about 11 million people in the UK! Of those, about 3.7 million are still of working age, which can be quite a challenge with communications in the workplace. Perhaps even more alarming is that only around a fifth of people with a hearing loss wear a hearing aid! The rest just try and manage without any help, which is quite sad when hearing aids are available to the majority of sufferers free of charge on the NHS.
What did you say?
Hearing loss and deafness can lead to many problems and not just with missing what people are saying or having the TV turned up. Depression and loneliness due to social isolation have been linked to this disability for many years. And recent studies have shown that dementia risk can be increased by up to 5% where a hearing loss is present but no hearing aid is worn.
The purpose of Deaf Awareness Week is to bring these issues to light, to explain what the symptoms are and what solutions are currently available. Unfortunately, there is still some stigma with wearing hearing aids. But, as technology and designs improve and in-ear audio devices become more commonplace, it is hoped this will become less of an issue and they will be more widely accepted. The dispensing of hearing aids in the UK is certainly on the increase, with the number of devices issued both privately and on the NHS showing steady year-on-year growth. Whilst this is very encouraging, there are still millions who view a hearing aid as a negative sign of aging and so suffer with their impairment. From a technology point of view, modern hearing aids have advanced tremendously in recent years. This is especially true of the ones available privately. Rechargeable devices, remote programming, connectivity to mobile phones and even to the internet have brought hearing aids right up date with the 21st century.
So this really is a good time to have your hearing tested because even if a hearing loss is present, the technology has never been better to help. Book a test today at the Leeds Audiology Clinic, 29 Park Square, Leeds.
