Psychosocial disadvantages associated with occupational hearing loss as experienced in the family

A questionnaire has been developed to investigate the psychosocial disadvantages resulting from occupational hearing loss (OHL). It was designed to measure the awareness of the hearing disability, the coping strategies and the family response to the consequences of OHL. Answers to the questionnaire were obtained from 54 workers with various degrees of presumed OHL and from 44 normal-hearing workers employed in the same noisy plant. The results show that the family bears several consequences of the noise exposure and of the hearing loss of the worker and that its spontaneous reaction to OHL appears as one source of the psychosocial disadvantages experienced by the worker. The implications of these results for rehabilitative intervention are discussed.