PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH VISUAL ...

Indian J.

Psychiat. (1980).

22,

173—175

PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENT R. K. BANSAL.i M . S c , M. Ed., I. S. JAIN,« FRCS ; D O . ; FAMS, T. K. K O H L I ' , Ph.D. S. L. BANSAL*, MBBS., M S . SUMMARY Aa attempt has been made to study the psychological pattern in terms of six criteria in the visually handicapped subjects. A total of 75 subjects were administered Cornell Medical Index health questionnaire. Twenty-five out of these had normal vision, another third had curable ocular disease a n d the rest were permanently handicapped.

Recently there has been an increasing of these, 25 had normal vision, 25 had curstress in the intimate relationship between able eye problems and '. 5 had incurable the mind and the body. These mutual visual defects. A visual acuity between influences are encompassed by the science of 2/60 to 6/60 or visual fields less than 20° somatopsychology or pscyho-somatic medi- when it was unimprovable with any modalcine. In keeping with this, eye complaints ity of treatment was included in the inare symptoms of various psychiatric disorders curably blind group. When the visuallike hysteria, tension and distress, insomnia, acuity was more than 6/24 with the necessary neurasthenia and schizophrenia, etc. optical correction or treatment the subject (Clancy, 1963). was included in the curably impaired. On the other hand, impaired vision in No patient with duration of visual impairan individual will have a profound effect ment less than four years was included. on his psyche (Baker, 1954), a view which The psychological assessment was made is held also by many other authorities with the help of emotional section of Cornell (Merry, 1937 ; Barker, 1948). Jain (1979) Medical Index (Brodman et al., 1949). observed that the social implications of This section consists of 51 items grouped wearing spectacles induced frigidity like in six sections viz., inadequacy, depression, sensitivity, anxiety, anger and tension. states in many an individual. Questions were read out to the subjects Whereas most of this work has been done with visual acuity as a criterion for and responses marked. In some cases, the blindness or visual impairment, Grand test was self-administered. The entire ques(1977) reported that the peripheral fields tionnaire was examined to determine the of vision variable was the single best pre- number of 'yes' responses. Suspicion of dictor for anxiety in four of the five step- seriousness of a disorder increases as the number of 'yes' marked items increases. wise multiple regression analysis. The present study aims at comparing the RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ' psychological pattern of the normally sighted, The results obtained are summarised the curable visually impaired and the incurable visually handicapped. in Tables I and II. In Table I, insignificant values of t-ratio MATERIAL AND M E T H O D S for the normal subjects and the curable inA sample of 75 subjects was taken from dividuals were found. This is explained the Department of Ophthalmology. Out by the fact that the curable subjects had d e p a r t m e n t of Education, Punjab University, Chandigarn. 'Department of Ophthalmology, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh-160012.

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T A B U I—Values of means and standard devia- questionnaire. This is because the know* tion/or total scores ledge of the incurability of their visual defect certainly affects their psyche badly. Depression seems to be an aspect which Group SD Mean is highly affected in the curable and the incurable group. But it is difficult to underNormal 10.80 8.13 stand why comparison of the curable and Curable 11.36 8.25 the incurable does not yield differences of high probability in the field of anger as in 18.25 9.40 all other parameters. Incurable Values of Means and SD's for incurable Normal vs Curable : t=0.55, N.S. subjects in this study are about three times Normal vs Incurable : t=2.96, p