Observational study for assessing the relation of visual impairment with symptoms of depression

Abstract

To assess the relation of visual impairment related to the refractive error with symptoms of depressionin relation to age, gender, educational qualification, level of visual impairment, type of refractive error, and use of corrective measures taken by the patient.: Observational cross-sectional study. A total of 260 participants above the age of 12 years with unaided visual acuity below 6/18 were examined for their refractive error using objective and subjective tests of refraction. Depressive symptoms were assessed using patient health questionnaire – 9 (PHQ-9).: Chi-square and fisher’s exact test to find an association between qualitative variables. : Overall 70.77% of participants had depressive symptoms of varying degree. On assessing its severity 8.46% had moderate, 23.68% had mild, 38.46% had minimal depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms were more prevalent in the younger age group, educated patients, and similar in both genders, but none were statistically significant. A statistically significant association was found between the level of visual impairment with depressive symptoms (p=0.01) and its severity (p=0.03). Relation of depressive symptoms with various types of refractive error were significant (p=0.01). The prevalence of depressive symptoms increased with an increasing degree of myopia (p=0.015) and hypermetropia (p=0.68). Participants who were not using corrective measures had more depressive symptoms in comparison to those using it. (p=0.19): Statistically significant association was found between depressive symptoms and its severity with the level of visual impairment, types, and degree of refractive error, especially myopia. There was no statistically significant association of refractive error with depressive symptoms and its severity in relation to age, gender, education.