The UK Council on Deafness created Deaf Awareness Week to increase the visibility of challenges the deaf community face and educate others on how they can support them. A noble aim – and being a tinnitus researcher with chronic tinnitus and a severe and profound hearing loss, it’s time to pause and consider.

While my own hearing loss was the result of a bad case of the measles, the most common cause of hearing loss is Age-Related Hearing Loss (ARHL). Hearing loss occurs slowly and progressively over time, and will lead to difficulty in understanding speech, especially in adverse conditions. Shockingly, when this occurs, research suggests that people take between 7 to 10 years (years!) to do anything about it.

There are many reasons for this. A refusal to accept that you are getting older – and there is still great stigma about the use of hearing aids. Perhaps you will gradually prefer people to stand on a particular side of you. To sit with your back to the wall, when at the pub or in a restaurant. To gradually avoid noisy places with hard floors and poor atmospherics. To turn the volume up on the TV. Standing closer to people because they all mumble. These (and others) are all behavioural adaptions which mask any hearing issue you may have.

Eventually, you will see an audiologist, perhaps referred to one by your GP. But uptake is not 100% and even if you need and are given hearing aids, they can still end up in the drawer, unused. Maybe they were a bad fit, or maybe it’s the cost of private hearing aids or that you don’t like the look of them. But another more insidious reason is that the patient may have waited too long.

To have untreated hearing loss is to have increasing separation and isolation from the world around you. Once easily recognised sounds are forgotten, and hard to process and relearn. For example, when fitted many years ago with my first pair of in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aids, I was maddened by a constant drumming sound that turned out to the gentle sound of raindrops on the window. I had forgotten what that sound was like and had to relearn it. But if you leave it too long, especially if you are older, this process is too slow, too difficult, and ultimately leaves you unable to enjoy the full benefits of your new hearing aids.

Early realisation of hearing loss is key.

A key sign is worsened speech perception in noisy environments. But research also shows that this can be linked to global cognitive deficit – reduced performance across a range of cognitive tasks. We know that only 1 in 5 people with hearing loss pursue amplification (i.e. hearing aids), but if hearing loss is untreated, we also know that a 10dB increase in hearing threshold (i.e. when noises have to be 10dB louder for you to hear them) is linked to a 14% increase in individual risk of dementia.

There are many other drivers of course, but this is one of them. However, we also know that hearing aid users self-report increased satisfaction and quality of life when compared to non-users with hearing loss. It is this last point that is perhaps the most important – the ability to get out and socialise is critical.

If you are cranking up the TV to the point where your partner is complaining, or if you are starting to struggle in the noisiest environments, no matter what your age, please consider a hearing test. It’s that important to your health, your well-being and to the quality of the rest of your life.

Dr James Jackson is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Reader in Biological Psychology, a member of the Professional Advisory Committee to Tinnitus UK, and co-chair of the Staff Disability+ Network at Leeds Trinity University.