Daily Functionality of People with Low Vision: The Impact of Visual Acuity, Depression, and Life Orientation-A Cross-Sectional Study

Background

Low vision (LV) has a significant negative impact on the activities of daily life as well as on the psychological health of patients.

Objectives

The objective of this study is to investigate psychological, clinical, and demographic factors that may impact the daily functionality of patients with LV.

Methods

A convenience sample of 53 patients, meeting the WHO criteria for LV, was recruited. Questionnaires on daily functionality, depression, and life orientation (in terms of optimism/pessimism) were administered along with a semistructured personal interview. Key Findings. The main results revealed a significant negative correlation between daily functionality and depression (r = -0.423, p < 0.001). Conversely, there is a positive correlation between daily functionality and visual acuity (r = 0.415, p < 0.001), while years since diagnosis were negatively correlated with depression (r = -0.345, p < 0.001). Depression seems to be a moderate predictor of a person's daily functionality (β = -0.389, p < 0.002), followed by visual acuity (β = -0.344, p = 0.006), explaining the 31.1% of the total variance.

Conclusions

The study supports a correlation between daily functionality and both depression and visual acuity. Optimism as a personality characteristic did not factor into the prediction model for daily functionality, but it showed a strong correlation with lower levels of depressive symptoms. This highlights the potential for developing coping strategies for chronic disease management. Recommendations. The study could serve as a useful guide and may urge clinicians to pay attention to the psychological evaluation of these patients, supporting their unique emotional needs. Mental health professionals can use patients' positive resources to provide appropriate counseling and embrace the coping skills that encourage their engagement in activities of daily life.

Cognitive Scripts, Anxiety and Styles of Coping with Stress in Teenagers Practising Sports

The aim of the study was to present the relationships between the way of perceiving oneself and the world by young athletes, the cognitive anxiety and the ways of coping with stress. The target group consisted of 222 participants (114 boys and 108 girls) aged 16-20, students of sports-profiled secondary schools. The participants specialised in both winter and summer sports, as well as in individual and team sport disciplines. The following tools were implemented: Attitudes to Intrapersonal, Interpersonal and to the World Questionnaire, Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) and Sport Anxiety Scale. The study showed that negative perception of oneself and others increases the level of cognitive anxiety and decreases the tendencies to search for social contacts in the face of stress. With regard to the positive image of oneself and others, the opposite was observed. The above relationships refer mainly to girls who practise sports.

Mental stress as consequence and cause of vision loss: the dawn of psychosomatic ophthalmology for preventive and personalized medicine

The loss of vision after damage to the retina, optic nerve, or brain has often grave consequences in everyday life such as problems with recognizing faces, reading, or mobility. Because vision loss is considered to be irreversible and often progressive, patients experience continuous mental stress due to worries, anxiety, or fear with secondary consequences such as depression and social isolation. While prolonged mental stress is clearly a consequence of vision loss, it may also aggravate the situation. In fact, continuous stress and elevated cortisol levels negatively impact the eye and brain due to autonomous nervous system (sympathetic) imbalance and vascular dysregulation; hence stress may also be one of the major causes of visual system diseases such as glaucoma and optic neuropathy. Although stress is a known risk factor, its causal role in the development or progression of certain visual system disorders is not widely appreciated. This review of the literature discusses the relationship of stress and ophthalmological diseases. We conclude that stress is both consequence and cause of vision loss. This creates a vicious cycle of a downward spiral, in which initial vision loss creates stress which further accelerates vision loss, creating even more stress and so forth. This new psychosomatic perspective has several implications for clinical practice. Firstly, stress reduction and relaxation techniques (e.g., meditation, autogenic training, stress management training, and psychotherapy to learn to cope) should be recommended not only as complementary to traditional treatments of vision loss but possibly as preventive means to reduce progression of vision loss. Secondly, doctors should try their best to inculcate positivity and optimism in their patients while giving them the information the patients are entitled to, especially regarding the important value of stress reduction. In this way, the vicious cycle could be interrupted. More clinical studies are now needed to confirm the causal role of stress in different low vision diseases to evaluate the efficacy of different anti-stress therapies for preventing progression and improving vision recovery and restoration in randomized trials as a foundation of psychosomatic ophthalmology.

Factors associated with participation on the competitive labour market of people with visual impairments in The Netherlands

BACKGROUND

Worldwide, the employment rate of people with visual impairments (PVIs) is lower than that of the general working-age population. To improve the employment rate of this group, there is a need for knowledge about differences in modifiable factors between working and non-working PVIs.

OBJECTIVE

To identify modifiable factors associated with participation on the competitive labour market of PVIs. Based on the findings, we aim to develop an individual assessment instrument for determining the odds of labour market success of PVIs.

METHODS

Data were collected among 299 PVIs by means of a cross-sectional telephone survey based on existing (validated) and self-developed scales and items. Logistic regression analysis was used to find the strongest predictors of the dichotomous outcome of 'having paid work on the competitive labour market' (yes/no).

RESULTS

We found three personal non-modifiable factors (level of education, comorbidity, level of visual impairment) and three modifiable factors (mobility, acceptance and optimism) to be significantly (p <  0.05) associated with having paid work.

CONCLUSIONS

The factors of optimism, acceptance and mobility should be included in an individual assessment instrument which can provide PVIs and their job coaches with good starting points for improving the labour market situation of the PVIs.

Social and Temporal Comparisons as Moderators of Psychological Resources Associations With Wellbeing

Abstract. The current study investigated the associations of psychological resources, social comparisons, and temporal comparisons with general wellbeing. The sample included 142 community participants (47.9% men; age range 23–83 years), who compared themselves with others, and with their younger selves, on eight dimensions (e.g., physical health, resilience). They also completed questionnaires assessing psychological resources of mastery and self-esteem, and three components of subjective wellbeing: life satisfaction and negative and positive affect. The main results showed that high levels of psychological resources contributed to wellbeing, with self-enhancing social and temporal comparisons moderating the effects of resources on certain wellbeing components. Specifically, under low levels of mastery or self-esteem self-enhancing social or temporal comparisons were related to either higher life satisfaction or positive affect. The results highlight the role of resources and comparisons in promoting people’s wellbeing, and suggest that self-enhancing comparisons function as cognitive coping mechanisms when psychological resources are low.

Quality of life among parents of children with epilepsy: A preliminary research study

PURPOSE

The current preliminary study was based on the principles of positive psychology orientation when examining the multidimensional construct of quality of life (QOL): the physical functioning, psychological functioning, functional state, and social functioning among parents of children with epilepsy. We assessed the contribution of loneliness and personal resources, namely optimism and flexibility, to parents' QOL.

METHOD

The study was conducted at a multidisciplinary center for epilepsy in a central hospital in Israel. Forty-eight parents agreed to participate in a preliminary research study and completed a battery of self-report questionnaires.

RESULTS

Significant negative correlations were found between flexibility and the scores on the four components of QOL (higher scores on the QOL scales indicated lower QOL). Optimism was not found to be associated with the scores on QOL. High levels of loneliness were found to be associated with higher scores on the four components of parents' QOL. Among sociodemographic variables, only the economic situation (due to illness) was linked negatively to the scores on QOL components. Flexibility and economic situation were the significant variables that accounted for the explained variance of total QOL.

CONCLUSION

The results of this study highlight the importance of flexibility in effectively managing the stressors that might be associated with childhood epilepsy. These results suggest that psychosocial intervention providing coping strategies for the family might improve QOL. Moreover, a parent's economic situation seems to be an essential part of the psychosocial assessment, and assurance of the optimal utilization of financial rights and facilities may improve their QOL.

The development of a three part model of psychological resilience

Psychological resilience has been defined as the ability of an individual to recover from a traumatic event or to remain psychologically robust when faced with an adverse event. This study investigated a sample of 176 police officers who were surveyed at commencement of their training in 1998/1999 (Time 1), 12 months later (Time 2), and at the end of 2009 (Time 3). A multidimensional model of psychological resilience (including environment, thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and physical activities) was evaluated in terms of the pathogenic outcomes of posttraumatic stress, psychological distress, and physical health at the three time points. A three part model of psychological resilience (environment, physical behaviours, and cognitions) was used to demonstrate that social support, adaptive health practices, adaptive coping, and optimism were effective when police officers were faced with adversity. The model provides initial understandings of the multidimensional nature of psychological resilience which requires further evaluation.

Resilience and distress: Israelis respond to the disengagement from Gaza and the second Lebanese war

Resilience and distress in Israeli society were assessed at three points in time: before and after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, and after the second Lebanese war. A random sample of 366 Israelis was assessed for nation-related anxiety and hostility, personal resources and post-traumatic symptoms. The lowest levels of anxiety were observed at the second time point, after the disengagement. Respondents with high-resilience profiles showed lower levels of post-traumatic symptoms and higher levels of personal resources. The findings underscore Israelis' resilience and the importance of personal resources in ongoing nationally stressful situations.

Social comparisons and well-being following widowhood and divorce

A sample of 196 participants (mean age 45.94 years, 54% women) completed inventories assessing upward and downward positive and negative social comparisons and general well-being. Widows and widowers were higher on upward negative comparisons than divorced or married persons while being lower on well-being measures of life satisfaction and psychosocial adjustment. The divorced were higher than the widowed or married people on upward or downward positive social comparisons. Upward negative social comparisons were associated with lower levels of well-being measures whereas upward positive social comparisons showed an opposite tendency. Upward negative comparisons were found to mediate the effects of widowhood on well-being. It is concluded that cognitive adaptation contributes to the well-being of widowed and divorced persons.

Threat to life and risk-taking behaviors: a review of empirical findings and explanatory models

This article reviews the literature focusing on the relationship between perceived threat to life and risk-taking behaviors. The review of empirical data, garnered from field studies and controlled experiments, suggests that personal threat to life results in elevated risk-taking behavior. To account for these findings, this review proposes a number of theoretical explanations. These frameworks are grounded in divergent conceptual models: coping with stress, emotion regulation, replenishing of lost resources through self-enhancement, modifications of key parameters of cognitive processing of risky outcomes, and neurocognitive mechanisms. The review concludes with a number of methodological considerations, as well as directions for future work in this promising area of research.