Identity, Social Position, Well-Being, and Health: Insights from Australians Living with Hearing Loss

This chapter is concerned with hearing loss and why people living with it endure the health outcomes they do. A substantive literature on poor health outcomes is considered in the light of insights from social psychology and social identity theory. While these health outcomes are apparent within this cohort, no coherent model for explaining the association between hearing and health can be identified in the literature. Similarly, the literature problematizes those with associated hearing loss with poorer mental health outcomes. In turn, this chapter considers the extent to which stressors arising from a contested communicative environment and social identity may contribute to the morbidity experienced by this cohort. It argues that more in-depth research needs to consider the extent to which stress resulting from communicating with impaired hearing, in difficult and stigmatizing environments, contributes to poorer health outcomes among this cohort.