First take a hearing test because hearing is a complex process, which is nearly always taken for granted, especially when you can hear. Being hard of hearing is more complex than the ability not to hear sound. The ability to hear sound is not the whole process; we need to differentiate between sounds, and also be able to hone in and concentrate on sounds in noisy environments.

Few people over the age of 65 can hear tones that have a frequency of 10,000 cycles per second. The loss of perception over the high frequencies means that it imposes a serious limit to being able to hear conversation in a group setting, and it is more difficult to accurately identify a person by their voice.

The prognosis for those with hearing loss in the Twenty first century is nothing like the prognosis of fifty years ago. The days of the ineffective hearing aid are at an end. A hearing aid can and does make an enormous difference to the quality of life. Gone are the days that the hearing aid is enormous and there is a social stigma attached to them. People with hearing difficulties have to live under a strain as they are constantly at a disadvantage, however their families also suffer. It puts a strain on relationships when things are misheard and the conversation goes off at a tangent, or if things have to be constantly repeated.