A Field Guide to Musicians’ Tinnitus
How do you explain the impact of tinnitus on a musician’s life and work? How do you express the depth of emotional weight that it can carry for this population when 90% of the general population - and indeed many musicians - are seemingly unaffected by tinnitus onset. How do you describe the psychological aspects of the presentation when your clinical experience and training is squarely in the Audiology field? The answer: team up with a tinnitus expert and a brilliant therapist. The right words started flowing quickly, and this piece came together in a whirlwind of positive collaborative energy. And now, I’m overjoyed to share it with all of you!
First, a thank you to Marc Fagelson, PhD, for the invitation to write this article for Seminars in Hearing. Marc and I have been collaborating for the last year on an exciting Music Audiology project with the American Tinnitus Association (ATA) and Texas Roadhouse to bring hearing and tinnitus awareness and care to musicians and crew music festivals. This work has been described in detail in the ATA’s Tinnitus Today Winter 2024 publication and we discussed it in detail on a panel episode of Talking Ears.
Second, this article would not have happened without the contributions and insights from these amazing collaborators:
Nancy Gould, M.Ed - Nancy is the Tinnitus Specialist with Tuned Care, and practices on telehealth and in North Carolina. She specializes in mindfulness stress reduction as well as tinnitus retraining. We first connected when she made dramatic differences in the care of many of my patients seen on the Tuned platform through the MusiCares program, so I knew she would have great insights into this article.
Melissa Rogel, LMFT - Melissa is a licensed individual and relationship therapist, runs the practice Cooperative Path in the Philadelphia area, and is the drummer of Philly-based indie rock band The Diaphone. She clearly understands the musicians’ perspective and brought to light the psychological concepts and terms which have evaded my audiologist brain for years. Full disclosure: I’ve been playing keyboards and bass with The Diaphone since 2022, so we’re bandmates.
At first, I half-jokingly nicknamed the article “A Field Guide to Musicians’ Tinnitus”, but the editor Marc Fagelson liked it so it stuck! The article outlines the differences in psychological presentation and care approaches when working with musicians who have significant tinnitus reactions, then follows a case that Nancy and I shared via teleaudiology. To me, the most value comes from the psychology concepts that Melissa Rogel brought into the light.
When I shared the article draft with my talking ear co-host, Juan Vasquez, he immediately brought up that we should do a reflection episode. His insights and thoughts on the psychosocial aspects helped open up the discussion and bring it off the page. You can hear Juan Vasquez and I discuss the article on the most recent episode of Talking Ears in the player below.
Thanks for reading/listening! If this work brought any value to you or your care of others, we would love to hear about it!
Sincerely,
Frank