A paper published in Ophthalmology examined whether vision impairment, ocular morbidity, and the treatment of the two are associated with depression and anxiety in children.
Tell me about the study.
This systematic review and meta-analysis pooled data from 36 studies. They found that vision impaired children demonstrated significantly higher scores for depression and anxiety than normally sighted children. In particular, children with myopia demonstrated higher scores for depression than normally sighted children.
Did they find a way to improve depression and anxiety?
The research team found that strabismus surgery significantly improved symptoms of depression and anxiety in children.
The take home.
According to the authors of the paper, further randomized controlled trials exploring the effect of public health measures for myopia correction on mental health in children are needed. Scaling up access to strabismus surgery could improve the mental health of affected children. (via)