On the effectiveness of interventions in hearing-impaired elders: a review of findings for psychosocial wellness and quality of life

Abstract Objectives Hearing loss has been the most common sensory impairment and one of the most challenging disabilities in the elderly population, with a multitude of consequences for the quality of life and psychosocial well-being. The present work was a narrative review on the effectiveness of communicative/psychosocial interventions that were designed for the elderly with hearing impairment. Methods A search of the academic database identified relevant articles based upon seven search facets (“quality of life,” “psychological,” “psychosocial wellbeing,” “hearing impaired,” “deaf,” “elderly”) up to November 2019. Inclusion criteria concerned the combined following terms: “quality of life,” “psychological” and “psychosocial wellbeing,” with the terms “hearing impaired” “deaf,” “elderly” and “interventions” and their possible variations. Results Only 9 out of 950 identified studies explicitly focused on psychosocial wellness and/or quality of life. Outcomes were sometimes contradictory in terms of the efficacy in quality of life and psychological wellbeing improvements. Conclusion Findings were promising in terms of quality of life improvement but did not allow for definitive conclusions, since study populations were heterogeneous and primary outcome measures did not always focus on deafness. Future research is needed to define effective protocols and evaluation measures that will be able to enlighten benefits in terms of psychosocial wellness and quality of life in the hearing impaired elderly population.