Self-help interventions chosen by subjects with chronic tinnitus – a retrospective study of clinical patients

Abstract

Objective

Self-help (without specialist support) can play an important role in tinnitus therapy. The purpose of this study was to investigate what fraction of subjects with tinnitus use self-help, what techniques are most commonly used to reduce tinnitus severity, and what distinguishes patients that use self-help from others.

Design

retrospective, observational study

Study sample

Adult patients admitted to our hospital clinic (460 participants) aged 19–83 years and reporting chronic tinnitus. The survey concerned therapy attempts prior to the clinic visit as well as self-help techniques chosen freely by the patient to reduce tinnitus severity.

Results

Data showed that 40.9% of the respondents chose some action themselves to reduce their tinnitus severity. Among the reported self-help techniques, acoustic stimulation was the most popular. In addition, patients chose distraction attention, relaxation, meditation, yoga, and physical activity. The likelihood of undertaking self-help increases with better education and higher tinnitus severity.

Conclusions

Knowledge about patients’ preferences of forms of self-help may help the health practitioner suggest a more suitable form of therapy. Due to the great interest in using sound therapy in tinnitus, it would be worthwhile looking at new forms of this therapy, for example increasingly popular mobile applications.

Keywords:

• Tinnitus
• self-help techniques
• sound therapy
• coping
• activity

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Dr Andrew Bell for stimulating discussions on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest is reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant form any funding agency in the public, commercial, or non-profit sectors.