Never mind, I can't hear you, the stress of living with Glue Ear: a young person's perspective

Although Glue Ear is a common condition in childhood, the psycho-social implications are under-investigated as to its impact on young people with the long-term condition. Although it meets the criteria for a chronic childhood illness, as defined by Berland (2009), it is not constructed as such. Additionally the hearing loss associated with it is regarded as temporary so young people with the long-term condition receive limited support. Young people have not been directly asked about their experiences of Glue Ear prior to this research. The methodology used combined Photovoice (Wang and Burris, 1997) for gathering the data and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith, et al., 2009) for data analysis. Participants created a photomontage summing up their experience which they discussed with the researcher. In this paper I provide a short summary of the way the young people explained their response to having intermittent hearing loss at school and with friends. The impact of continuing hospital visits and repeated operations which, for them, do not resolve the condition is explored from their perspective. This research was exploratory with three participants, aged 10-16 years. It does illustrate that young people are articulate and analytical in describing their experience of what is often seen as a trivial condition and that more awareness is needed by health care and educational professionals of the potential mental health implications for young people.