Psychological well-being in visually impaired and unimpaired individuals

This meta-analysis integrates the results from 198 studies that compared psychological well-being of visually impaired individuals with unimpaired control groups or population norms. On average, visually impaired people showed a strong decline of vision-specific psychological well-being. However, declines in vision-unspecific measures were only small. Furthermore, declines of psychological well-being were stronger in studies with convenience samples (rather than probability samples) and in studies that used population norms as standard for comparison (rather than control groups), in individuals with greater vision loss, in patients with age-related macular degeneration as compared to glaucoma, in adults as compared to children, and, in part, in older studies. These factors should inform researchers and practitioners for developing and implementing interventions aimed at protecting psychological well-being.