The Efficacy of Minimal Contact Interventions for Acute Tinnitus: A Randomised Controlled Study

Abstract

Acute tinnitus can lead to substantial distress and eventually result in long-lasting impairment. The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of a cognitive-behavioural intervention (delivered as Internet self-management, bibliotherapy or group training) to the information-only control condition.

Applicants suffered from subjective tinnitus for up to six months, were between 18 and 75 years old and received no other tinnitus-related psychological treatment. A total of 304 participants were randomly assigned to one of the four study arms. Tinnitus distress, depressive symptoms, psychosomatic discomfort and treatment satisfaction were assessed.

At the post-assessment tinnitus distress was significantly lower in the Internet and the group training conditions compared to the control condition. Inter-group effect sizes were moderate to large. At follow-up, all active training conditions showed significantly reduced tinnitus distress compared to the control condition (intention-to-treat analysis). An additional completer analysis showed a significant reduction in tinnitus distress only for the group condition. All effect sizes were moderate. There were no differences regarding psychosomatic discomfort, but depressive symptoms were reduced in the group condition at the post-assessment (intention-to-treat analysis). Treatment satisfaction was significantly higher in the training conditions. The dropout rate was 39%.

The present study shows that distress can be reduced as early as the acute stadium and that minimal-contact interventions are a promising way to do this. In particular, the Internet and group conditions led to a large, immediate decrease in distress, and the participants were highly satisfied with the training.

Keywords:

• bibliotherapy
• Internet
• self-help
• CBT

Acknowledgements

We thank Dirk Pfuhl for providing excellent technical support. The study was supported by a grant from the Federal Ministry of Research and Education, Germany (FKZ 01GX0732).