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August 22, 2007
I'm not deaf, you're mumbling!
Have you ever been out somewhere that's a bit noisy, and found yourself having to yell at the person next to you, or resorting to hand gesture and signals to communicate?
It's Hearing Awareness Week, and Sue Ward, administrative officer with the Wimmera Hearing Society, says that hearing problems in western Victoria are 'very, very common.'
"During the last 12 months, we've screened over 4,000 people, and we've identified 1,200 who need to go to the doctor," she says.
"With the rural industry, we've also identified over 1,300 rural industry people who have high-frequency hearing loss, which is possibly caused by noise damage...exposing their ears to constant noise.
"What is showing up now, which is quite amazing, is the teenagers. Part of our service is in schools, where we screen Year Seven students, and a lot of them are showing up with their [mp3 players], having a high frequency hearing loss."
And, she says, once you've damaged your hearing with constant exposure to loud noise - be it music from an mp3 player's headphones or computer games or industrial machinery - it's damaged for good.
"Once your ears start ringing, that's your ear's way of telling you that 'you're hurting me,'" she says.
"You need to stop. Once it's gone, it's gone - noise destroys."
So how do you know when it's your hearing that's going, and not just that everyone around you mumbles? And, if you've got a relative who seems to be having problems with their hearing, what do you do?
Get a hearing assessment, Ms Ward says.
"We're able to counsel them. They don't necessarily need to get hearing aids, but they just need some communication strategies which we can put in place for the whole family.
"Some of them are quite up-front; they know they've got a hearing loss. [But] lot of people that have a hearing loss don't want to know they've got a hearing loss. It's quite a difficult one, and you can't convince them to do anything, but we can convince the families to put in communications strategies, like gaining their attention before you speak to them.
"If you're living with someone with a hearing loss, what we'd tell you is to say that person's name before you speak to them, because most people with a hearing loss will guess the first half of the sentence, pick the second half up and then answer to what they feel, which nine out of ten times is very wrong.
"So if the person speaking alerts them by saying their name before they start speaking, that allows them to hear everything clearly."
http://www.abc.net.au/westernvic/stories/s2012005.htm?backyard
Posted by 4HL on August 22, 2007 8:16 AM
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