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What are we doing about it?

Our goal is to ease the distress experienced by millions of people who have tinnitus. We aim to do this:

• by providing information
• sourcing specialist products
• funding and carrying out research into treatments and an eventual cure
• raising awareness
• campaigning to improve health services for people with tinnitus.

Providing information

We provide support and information for people with tinnitus through our Tinnitus Helpline, our website, and our factsheets and leaflets. We also provide information for health professionals on managing patients who have tinnitus.

Sourcing specialist products

We are the largest UK supplier of products to help relieve the symptoms of tinnitus. Our specialist products include:

• sound enrichment devices, such as desktop noise generators, which produce soothing sounds to distract you from your tinnitus
• pillow speakers, which can be connected to DVD and CD players to help you get to sleep at night without disturbing others
• relaxation CDs, which play relaxing sounds, such as the sounds of forests, birdsong or running streams, and a book written by tinnitus professionals, Understanding tinnitus.

Funding and carrying out research

There is currently no cure for tinnitus. But we’re aiming to expand research into treatments and an eventual cure. We are doing this with financial support and by increasing pressure on major pharmaceutical companies and individuals. Since 1999, we have funded around £600,000 worth of research into tinnitus. This year, we will be funding new projects and increasing our expenditure to over £1m within the next five years.

Pharmaceutical companies play a vital role in turning promising scientific discoveries into 'real' treatments. Worryingly, there are very few of them working on tinnitus, so we have worked hard over the last few years to change this. We have researched the market for a drug to combat tinnitus and developed a market report highlighting the commercial opportunities for companies. There are now two (GSK and Merz Pharma) conducting early clinical trials of drugs that may prove useful and many more companies are showing real interest.

Read more about tinnitus research that we fund.

Raising awareness

We tell as many people as we can about what tinnitus is and how they can manage it. We also raise awareness among health professionals about how they can best support patients who have tinnitus. We hold a number of tinnitus information events and information days for people with tinnitus.

You can help us to raise awareness further by passing this information on to friends and family who might need it. If you would like to help fund our research and work on tinnitus please donate today.

Campaigning

As a result of our ongoing audiology campaign the UK government has made a commitment to include tinnitus services in its audiology action plan. We are also working with the NHS to help improve audiology services for people with tinnitus.

Our Don't Lose the Music campaign raises awareness of the dangers of over-exposure to loud music. We want to make safer listening a widely understood public health issue among 16 to 30 year olds, to prevent new generations from needing premature audiology treatment or from developing hearing problems such as tinnitus.