my perspective on why people make the hearing health decisions that they do, about the segment of people who have a hearing loss but don’t have a need for hearing help, and about another segment of people without a hearing loss but who do need hearing help. Nowhere in those analyses has been the concept of denial. But after hearing recently once again the comment that people who don’t get hearing aids are in denial, I’d like to examine this statement more closely.
The definition of being in denial is refusing to accept reality. In the hearing health field, it’s common for a person to be in denial about having a hearing loss before getting their hearing tested.
But once someone has seen their audiogram and had explained to them that they have hearing loss, it’s rare that they deny that fact. What’s more common is that they evaluate the proposed solution and decide it’s not the right fit for them—at least not yet. This is not being in denial, this is classic consumer choice.
We don’t accuse someone of being in denial if they choose not to wear reading glasses for mild vision changes, or if they opt not to use Invisalign for crooked teeth. They may simply not think that they have a need for these products, or they may prioritize comfort, cost, aesthetics, or convenience.
To bring it back to hearing health, if someone decides not to buy a companion microphone that could help them hear better in noise, this is not being in denial. Nor is the poor uptake of OTC hearing aids a result of people being in denial. It is simply the result of complex human decision-making based on perceived wants and needs.
Perhaps we as a field are the ones “in denial” about the fact that not everyone with hearing loss perceives a need for help, and that many with minimal hearing loss want solutions to help with their speech-in-noise difficulty. By shifting our thinking about getting people to "overcome their denial" to more deeply understanding the different hearing needs and decision-making reasons of different segments of people, we could better design and match hearing solutions more effectively and to more people.