Living with Hearing Difficulties: The Process of Enablement

Living with Hearing Difficulties is a source-book for professionals who encounter and support individuals with hearing difficulties. It will also be of interest to people with hearing difficulties themselves and those close to them. The book highlights the concept of audiological enablement as being an interactive process requiring the active involvement of both clinician and patient.

The thirteen chapters encompass four sections which broadly follow the categories of the World Health Organization's ICF (2001):

• Section 1 addresses types of hearing disorders, the impairments they cause and also the process of help seeking.
• Section 2 deals with the effects of hearing impairment on communication and psychosocial functioning.
• Section 3 considers the individual in their environment; their family, work, and leisure. Section 4 elaborates on the process of enablement in a non-prescriptive manner.

The authors approach the problems and needs from the standpoint of what the patient/client is seeking. Enablement is seen as a team effort between the professionals, the patient and their family in an ever-changing environment. This entails using any relevant techniques to ensure the well-being of the individual with hearing impairment; that end remains very much their goal.

The book also has a companion website www.wiley.com/go/stephens which hosts additional downloadable documents as well as a demonstration of the concept of the signal-to-noise ratio.