Psychotherapy may help tinnitus sufferers cope

Psychotherapy may help tinnitus suffers cope with the life disturbances that sometimes accompany their condition, according to a new review of studies.

Tinnitus is a sensation of ringing or other noise when there is no external cause for the sound. A counseling method called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) seems to improve patients' quality of life, even when the volume of the noise remains the same.

The review of six small randomized controlled trials gathered data on 285 patients. The article appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library. After participating in CBT, tinnitus sufferers reported greater overall satisfaction with their life, compared to a similar group of patients who did not receive CBT treatment, the Cochrane review found.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is used with good success as a treatment for depression. So lead reviewer Pablo Martinez-Devesa and his team thought CBT might lift the mood of tinnitus sufferers. "We were expecting, perhaps, to see a bigger improvement on the symptoms of depression, but we didn't find it," he said. Martinez-Devesa said the collected studies included just a small number of people with severe depression, so it may have been difficult to perceive a change in mood.

CBT also failed to produce significant improvements in the subjective [or perceived] volume of tinnitus, the review found.

Source: Medical News Today
(this link will open in a new window)

Deafness Research UK cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the information contained in external websites.