There are a number of different professionals who can help you with tinnitus. These include:
- Doctor/General Practitioner
- Audiologist
- Ear, Nose & Throat Doctor
- Tinnitus Counsellor
- Psychotherapist
- Cranio-sacral Therapist
- EMDR Practitioner
Each specialist has expertise in their own field. This means that you may see one professional for different aspects of tinnitus treatment or therapy. For this reason finding a tinnitus solution can feel a little disjointed. Tinnitus requires an integrated approach which might draw on the expertise of different clinicians.
This page outlines the healthcare professionals who can help you pave the way to tinnitus habituationand tinnitus recovery. It is helpful to separate the type of help you might receive into medical practitioners and therapeutic practitioners.
Medical Tinnitus Help
Doctor/General Practitioner
Your first port of call if you are experiencing tinnitus should be your local doctor. They can do some basic hearing checks and rule out any underlying medical condition which might be causing tinnitus. They will be able to tell if you have an ear wax blockage which may be contributing to tinnitus symptoms. They can also tell you if you are taking medication which can result in tinnitus symptoms. Once these checks have been carried out they might refer you to an audiologist or an ear, nose and throat specialist. They may also tell you that there is no cure for tinnitus. There is no medical cure for tinnitus but there are a number of things that you can do in order to manage your tinnitus, habituate to it and in some cases get rid of it all together.
Audiologist
An audiologist will test your hearing to see what level of hearing loss you have, if any, as well as test the type of tinnitus you have, whether it is subjective or objective tinnitus as well as the type of noise you are experiencing. This information will then be passed to a hearing technician if a hearing aid solution might be beneficial. The hearing technician will help you with choosing a bespoke or generic tinnitus hearing aid. This hearing aid can be a combination device which acts as a hearing aid as well as making a white noise sound directed into the ear canal.
ENT Specialist (Otolaryngologist)
ENT stands for Ear, Nose and Throat. ENT physicians are trained in the medical/ surgical management and treatment of ear, nose, throat and related structures of the head and neck. If you require surgery or specialist help for a condition effecting any of the above areas you would see an ENT physician.
Psychological Tinnitus Help
All of the below can help with tinnitus habituation.
We incorporate all of the below as part of our Tinnitus Counselling.
Tinnitus Counsellor
A tinnitus counsellor or therapist might offer a number of different ways to help tinnitus. These might include: Tinnitus education, addressing thinking and behavioural difficulties with cognitive behavioural therapy, providing counselling and support for related difficulties. Please see our Tinnitus Counsellingpage.
Psychotherapist
Utilising psychotherapy can be enormously beneficial for problematic tinnitus. It can help underlying difficulties which underly tinnitus symptoms as well as tinnitus associated difficulties. These might include anxiety, stress and depression.
Trauma Specialist
If you are suffering from tinnitus as a result of physical or emotional trauma you may need to see a trauma therapist or EMDR practitioner.
It is imperative that trauma is processed prior to treating tinnitus specifically. This is especially true regarding trauma associated tinnitus. Experiencing unprocessed trauma can impede the tinnitus habituation process. Techniques used by a trauma specialist might include Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing Therapy, EMDR.
Somatic Tinnitus Help
Somatic difficulties can characterise a negative tinnitus experience. A tinnitus trigger can mobilise the the nervous system's stress response. The following therapies can help.
Cranio-sacral Therapy
One of the areas which some specialists believe explains the onset of tinnitus is the nervous system and somatic imbalance. Working with the body and the nervous system can help to reduce or alleviate and even completely stop tinnitus symptoms. Cranio-Sacral Therapy.