Tinnitus Counselling and Psychoeducation

Counselling is an essential component of almost all tinnitus therapies and is practiced in some form or another by most tinnitus clinicians. Tinnitus counselling is a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals with tinnitus to accomplish their wellness goals. Tinnitus is a complex experience, making it a difficult condition to treat and to live with. Some of the difficulties that accompany tinnitus include high levels of emotional distress, sleep disruptions, and concentration and attention problems along with reduced life quality. Tinnitus counselling aims to reduce the negative impact that tinnitus has on patient’s lives. Counselling helps identify treatment goals, barriers, and means to achieve these through conversation and empowering self-directed changes to thoughts and activities in daily life. To facilitate these goals, instruction and psychoeducation help individuals understand their tinnitus, so as to reduce the occurrence and level of distress. Providing patients with information in an educational way about what their tinnitus is, and what it is not, helps demystify the condition, which can reduce their suffering. This chapter will clarify the role of tinnitus counselling and describe the different counselling styles. The perspectives of different professionals in providing counselling, focusing on audiologists and psychologists, are discussed. A counselling framework (AREA: Attend, React, Explain, Adapt) is presented as an example of how clinicians can organize their tinnitus counselling. This chapter provides a toolbox of counselling components for clinicians to select from and apply according to their individual counselling style.