RESUMO
To find the status of age of suspicion and identification availed for children with different communication disorders. This cross-sectional survey study was conducted on 2081 children aged 0.5 to 15 years (mean: 5.41; S.D.: ±3.77) who came to the speech-language diagnostic department of AYJNISHD(D), RC, Kolkata for availing rehabilitation service at the institute. The information was gathered from the parents and caregivers of the children. After detailed evaluation by the interdisciplinary team, the developed 14-item questionnaire was administered, and data were recorded and tabulated. Findings suggested that average age of suspicion of presence of communication problem is 2 years (SD: ±0.98). The suspicion rate increased with increasing age with a saturation in suspicion rate after 5 years. Consultation of a medical professional, primarily an ENT specialist was availed by 2.8 years (SD: ±1.89) of age and 32% of the doctors during the first visit assured the parents not to worry as the child would learn language with age and only 43.4% were referred for rehabilitation. Among them, 42.8% of children were found hearing loss, 24.5% found to have autism spectrum disorder, 20.66% of children were diagnosed with developmental delay, 6.4% were diagnosed with intellectual disability, 4.7% were diagnosed with late language emergence and 0.86% were diagnosed with cerebral palsy. From the findings we can conclude perceived cause of delay in identification is lack of awareness, lack of proper guidance from the primary consultants, and tendency to follow wait-and-watch policy.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Covid-19 pandemic has caused a profound impact on the lives of people and has given rise to many mental health issues like anxiety and stress which eventually has given rise to bothersome tinnitus. In case of people having pre-existing tinnitus, the pandemic has raised the problem of tinnitus and the co-morbid issues related to tinnitus and severely affected the overall quality of life. Hence, we need to find a mean for home-based management of tinnitus and its associated problems. OBJECTIVE: To understand the mechanism of mental health and to compare between the mindfulness-based tinnitus reduction and tinnitus retraining therapy on android-based application. DESIGN: Comparative and Experimental design. METHOD: The study was conducted on 60 participants and was divided into two groups. Detailed audiological assessment, tinnitus assessment and Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and Tinnitus Cognitions Questionnaire (TCQ) were administered. Group-I was provided with tinnitus retraining therapy and group-II was provided with mindfulness based tinnitus stress reduction. After the post therapy evaluation the data were compiled for statistical analysis in SPSS software 20.0. Results: It was found that there were significant difference between the pre and post therapy scores of TRT and MBTSR in both THI and TCQ (p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Home-based management of tinnitus during the COVID-19 pandemic using both TRT and MBTSR were highly successful and had similar results MBTSR was found to be more useful as it had better outcome in reducing the tinnitus related annoyance and shown better improvement in QOL examination.