@Autumnly
Have you read BTA's Tinnitus Manifesto, published during Tinnitus Week? It's available
here. I just skimmed through and didn't see anything that resembled "most people don't mind having tinnitus."
You've been a watchdog about this issue, more so than anyone - is BTA promoting two messages that contradict one another?
Thanks, TC
I often wonder how they could focus on the debilitating nature of tinnitus during Tinnitus Week 2020 but then post something like the videos mentioned above just a few weeks/months afterwards. Sometimes I wonder whether this has anything to do with the Cognitive Model of Tinnitus Distress. According to it, tinnitus can be debilitating for people who react negatively to it and fear it - so yes, tinnitus can be debilitating
but there are actually "effective ways of managing it" (CBT, mindfulness). So it would be
nice to have a cure and make things more
convenient but actually, we already have treatments that are good enough for
everyone with tinnitus - we could argue now what they meant by "managing" and "effectively managing tinnitus" but doesn't it create the image that everyone can learn to live well with it?
Then again, maybe they genuinely don't see the harm in the way they word things but I don't get the message from them that they see tinnitus as a condition that can a) be debilitating in itself and b) that there are sufferers who can not be noticeably helped with the "treatments" currently available. However, they might be worried about increasing anxiety in new sufferers if they were to talk more openly about the suffering tinnitus can cause - but I don't think that preventing potential short-term induced anxiety in new sufferers should be seen as more important than sharing how debilitating tinnitus can be.
Nonetheless, the BTA's Tinnitus Manifesto is very well done I command them immensely for all the work they put into Tinnitus Week 2020 and the Tinnitus Roundtable initiative. The way they word things, however, seems contradictory, for example saying everyone will notice tinnitus less over time is first of all not true and secondly plays right into the idea that tinnitus is only temporarily debilitating.