Effects of Personal Affects on Tinnitus Retraining Therapy

Effects of Personal Affects on Tinnitus Retraining Therapy Soohyang Lee and Junghak Lee Department of Audiology, Hallym University of Graduate Studies, Seoul, Korea According to previous researches, psychological factors are highly correlated with tinnitus occurrence and perception. However, the effects of psychological factors on tinnitus treatment are not well-known. This study examines how personal affects influence tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), a popular method of tinnitus treatment. For this purpose, TRT had been performed for 65 subjects (M 33, F 32) aged between 15 and 75 years with tinnitus but normal hearing sensitivity. All subjects had worn a bone vibrator with a white noise masker at least 3 hours a day for 10 weeks at the individual mixing point level. Korean questionnaire of Tinnitus handicap inventory (K-THI) was used for measuring the effects of TRT for all subjects, and then for two sub-groups, positive affect (PA) group (n=17) and negative affect (NA) group (n=11), which were selected based on the scores of the positive affect and negative affect schedule (PANAS). The results were as follows. First, the differences in THI scores between pre and post TRT were statistically significant for total scores and all three subscale scores. Second, although both groups demonstrated considerable reduction in THI scores after TRT, the PA group showed significantly lower THI scores than the NA group. Third, the improvement rates considering the individual THI scores before TRT were higher for the PA group than the NA group, especially at emotional and catastrophic subscales. The above results suggest that personal affects influence tinnitus treatment. Thus, professional counseling or psychotherapy is recommended for persons with tinnitus who have strong negative affect.