Rijke Wouter J, Vermeulen Anneke M, Willeboer Christina, Knoors Harry E T, Langereis Margreet C, van der Wilt Gert Jan
Audiologisch Centrum, Royal Dutch Kentalis, Sint-Michielsgestel, Netherlands.
Department for Health Evidence, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jun 23;13:895868. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.895868. eCollection 2022.
In the Western world, for deaf and hard-of-hearing children, hearing aids or cochlear implants are available to provide access to sound, with the overall goal of increasing their wellbeing. If and how this goal is achieved becomes increasingly multifarious when these children reach adolescence and young adulthood and start to participate in society in other ways. An approach to wellbeing that includes personal differences and the relative advantages and disadvantages that people have, is the capability approach, as developed by Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen. Capability is the set of real opportunities people have to do and be things they have reason to value. We interviewed 59 young people, aged 13 through 25, with cochlear implants (37) or hearing aids (22) to capture their capability. We found that their hearing devices enabled them to actively participate in a predominantly hearing society, with few differences between cochlear implant and hearing aid recipients. They did, however, report challenges associated with prejudices and expectations, and with feeling poorly understood, all of which appeared to impact their capability. Through the lens of capability, alleged differences between hearing aid and cochlear implant recipients began to fade. We discuss the implications for initiatives focused on the long-term support young recipients of hearing devices to meet their specific requirements over time.
在西方世界，对于失聪和听力有障碍的儿童来说，可以使用助听器或人工耳蜗来帮助他们听到声音，总体目标是提升他们的幸福感。当这些孩子进入青春期和青年期并开始以其他方式参与社会时，这个目标能否实现以及如何实现就变得越来越复杂多样。一种考虑到个人差异以及人们所具有的相对优势和劣势的幸福观是能力方法，这是由诺贝尔奖获得者阿玛蒂亚·森提出的。能力是人们所拥有的一系列真正的机会，使他们能够去做自己有理由重视的事情并成为那样的人。我们采访了59名年龄在13岁至25岁之间、佩戴人工耳蜗（37人）或助听器（22人）的年轻人，以了解他们的能力状况。我们发现，他们的听力设备使他们能够积极参与一个以听力正常者为主的社会，人工耳蜗使用者和助听器使用者之间几乎没有差异。然而，他们确实报告了与偏见和期望以及感觉不被理解相关的挑战，所有这些似乎都影响了他们的能力。从能力的角度来看，助听器使用者和人工耳蜗使用者之间所谓的差异开始逐渐消失。我们讨论了这些发现对于旨在长期支持听力设备年轻使用者并随着时间推移满足他们特定需求的倡议的意义。
