Why Is There Such a Stigma About Cognitive Behavioural Therapy?

Can you elaborate?

 

This is an excerpt that tells it better than I could:

The magnitude of the matching sound has often been expressed in dB sensation level (SL), which is the level relative to the absolute threshold of the individual for detection of the matching sound. Tinnitus is usually matched in loudness by a sound with a low SL, typically in the range 6-20 dB SL; for a review, see Moore [7]. However, when loudness matches to tinnitus are made over a series of days, the matches can range up to 30-45 dB SL [3]. The finding that tinnitus is usually matched in loudness with tones at low SLs initially led to the idea that tinnitus is perceived as soft, despite causing marked distress for some people [10]. However, this interpretation ignores the effects of loudness recruitment. For a frequency where a person has a hearing loss, the loudness of a tone or other sound increases more rapidly than normal once the SL is more than 4-6 dB, and at high levels the loudness is similar to what would be experienced by a person with normal hearing [11]. If there is a hearing loss at the frequency of the tone used to obtain a tinnitus match, the loudness of the matching tone may be moderately high, even though its SL is low [7,12]. The unit of subjective loudness is the sone [13]. Calculations using the model of loudness perception published by Moore and Glasberg show that an SL of, say, 20 dB, leads to a loudness of 0.11 sones for a person with normal hearing, but a loudness of 2.13 sones for a person with a 60 dB hearing loss [14]. Thus, the sound is louder by a factor of almost 20 for the person with hearing loss.

The conclusion from all of this is that loudness matches in dB SL are not related in a simple way to loudness in sones. Tinnitus can be moderately loud even when the SL of the matching stimulus is low.

 

Thank you - that is informative, but I couldn't find anything related to the 1 kHz "magic number" that you had in your original post. What's so special about 1 kHz?

 

If you look up some other studies they suggest using 1kHz as a standard. For want of a standard, but also because it's commonly found to be the region with the least hearing loss (save for Menière's or conductive HL). 1kHz is also the region where hearing is most acute if I'm correct.

I've found from personal experience that this standard is not adopted everywhere. There's no use in having a shared database for big data if the practices are different.

 

Rather than re-type/explain, I’ll paste part of a previous post I made which should hopefully shed some light on this:

From a Psychoacoustics point-of-view, two sounds that are the same on a decibel meter will not necessarily be perceived as being the same loudness, and for this reason, a new unit called the phon was created. A phon is equal to a decibel at 1 kHz, so 40 phons would be the same as 40 dB at 1 kHz. A 90dB sound at 150 Hz, for example, would not be perceived to be as loud as a sound that is 90 dB at 3kHz, so by using phons we can try and keep one’s perception as neutral as possible. Sones are a linear representation of phons; 1 sone is equal to 40 phons and every 10 phons thereafter would represent a doubling in perceived loudness. This means that 50 phons would be equal to 2 sones and 60 phons would be equal to 4 sones, etc. Psychoacoustics is the science of how our brain interprets sound, and it’s interesting to note that phons and sones are the primary units of measurement. This is because it’s particularly difficult to define how loudness is perceived from one individual to another and these are likely the most neutral measurements we currently have.

 

I was told it's never above 10-20 dB above your hearing threshold... But that also means if you have a loss of, let's say, 40-50 dB, the tinnitus could actually be perceived as 60-70 dB and so on. At least that's what those ENT guys and professors told me.

So with severe hearing loss, tinnitus CAN be actually fucking loud, not only in subjective loudness.