Psychiatric Functioning, Resilience, and Recovery Among Deaf Consumers of Public Behavioral Health Services

Evaluating Equity Through the Social Determinants of Hearing Health

Hearing loss in adults is a significant public health problem throughout the world. Undiagnosed and untreated hearing loss causes a measurable impact on health and social, occupational, and emotional well-being of those affected. In spite of a wide array of health care resources to identify and manage hearing loss, there exist vast disparities in outcomes, as well as access to and utilization of hearing healthcare. Hearing rehabilitation outcomes may vary widely among different populations and there is a pressing need to understand, in a broader sense, the factors that influence equitable outcomes, access, and utilization. These factors can be categorized according to the widely accepted framework of social determinants of health, which is defined by the World Health Organization as "the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age." According to Healthy People 2030, these determinants can be broken into the following domains: healthcare access and quality, education access and quality, social and community context, economic stability, and neighborhood and built environment. This article defines these domains and examines the published research and the gaps in research of each of these domains, as it pertains to hearing health and healthcare. Herein, we review foundational sources on the social determinants of health and hearing-related research focused on the topic. Further consideration is given to how these factors can be evaluated in a systematic fashion and be incorporated into translational research and hearing health care.

[What Seems in Need of Psychiatric Care Does not Always Have to be. Hearing Loss as the Cause of a Suspected Psychopathological Diagnosis]

In the history of psychiatry and otology, there is evidence that mental and hearing disorders can be interdependent. For example, Emil Kraepelin in 1915 and a Leipzig serial study published in 1962 indicated that hearing-impaired people become psychologically conspicuous or mentally till more often than people whose hearing is not impaired.We outline the case of a patient who showed psychopathological abnormalities before and after giving birth to her daughter, especially in attention, cognitive conversion ability and social competence. After being diagnosed a bilateral moderate sensorineural hearing loss and being provided with hearing aids, no psychopathology was detectable. The case may be a pointer to the fact that hearing-impaired patients still fall through professional boundaries and are not provided with adequate care due to their lack of or limited ability to communicate.