Classification of visual impairment in children and adults

According to statistics, in the world about 285 million people suffer from visual impairment; of which 39 million are completely blind and 246 million have low vision.

Many people begin to have vision problems since childhood. In this regard, a very important role is assigned to the implementation of preventive measures and the timely adoption of measures aimed at preventing undesirable consequences. 80% of all cases of visual impairment can be prevented or cured.

Definition of vision

Man is endowed with nature by five senses, which enable him to know the world around him.

The vision of a person is the ability of a person to perceive information by converting the energy of electromagnetic radiation from the light range.

In order for us to see, our visual apparatus does a very difficult job.The eye catches optical stimuli, processes them into nerve impulses, which are transmitted to the cerebral cortex, to the site responsible for their processing and the formation of a certain image.In this complex process, oculomotor muscles are involved, the optic system of the eye, in whose structure includes the cornea, the lens, the iris and the vitreous, the optic nerve and the visual centers of the head the brain. If a functional failure occurs in any of these elements, it causes a visual impairment.Damages of different structures are manifested by various violations.

More than 80% of the information a person receives with the help of vision. A violation of vision partially or completely deprives him of such an opportunity. Weak-seeing people in our time - it's not uncommon.

Types of violations

Consider the main and most common types of visual disorders.

Myopia (myopia)

With myopia, a person does not distinguish between objects that are at a distance.The higher the degree of myopia, the weaker it sees into the distance. The image of the subject in myopia is not focused on the retina, but in front of it. This may be due to the curvature of the cornea, the lengthening of the eyeball, or the presence of these two symptoms.Most often, myopia is detected in adults who spend a lot of time at the computer, and in school-age children, because at that time the load on the eyes increases several times.This violation is corrected by glasses and lenses, as well as by surgical intervention.

Minor visual impairment can be corrected with the help of special visual exercises.

Hypermetropia (hyperopia)

Hyperopia is caused by impaired curvature of the cornea, insufficient size of the eyeball, or both.At a hypermetropia the image is projected not on a retina, and in a plane behind her. With farsightedness of medium and high degree, the image will be fuzzy both near and far. This disorder often occurs in childhood, but does not always indicate a decrease in vision.Pediatric farsightedness is the norm when caused by the small size of the eyeballs.As the child grows, the pathology passes by itself, but the process must be controlled by regularly visiting the oculist.

Astigmatism

With astigmatism, the surface of the eyeball acquires an oval shape, like a ball for rugby.Normally, the eye has an absolutely round surface. Such a visual impairment is expressed by an incorrect focus.The rays of light passing through the eye are projected on the retina at two points, which makes the objects vague.

Astigmatism often develops in childhood, as a rule, simultaneously with farsightedness or nearsightedness. In the absence of correction, this violation can provoke a sharp weakening of visual acuity, as well as cause strabismus.

Strabismus (strabismus)

Strabismus is the deviation of one of the eyes from the common fixation point, which makes it impossible to merge the two images into one.Strabismus occurs due to a decrease in visual acuity of one or both eyes, or due to a violation of refraction and accommodation.

Amblyopia

In the people this violation is called a "lazy eye".It develops with a difference in the refractive power of the eyeballs or is due to the congenital anomalies of one of them, and is also the result of untreated strabismus. As a result, a fuzzy image is transmitted to the brain, and it simply suppresses the work of one eye.In this case, deterioration of visual acuity is observed.

Child with an ablipy

If you do not treat amblyopia, visual acuity will worsen.

According to the degree of violations

The degree of visual impairment is determined by the level of visual acuity reduction - the ability of the eye to see 2 luminous points with a minimum distance between them.For normal visual acuity, equal to one, the ability of a person to distinguish letters or signs of the tenth line of a special table at a distance of 5 meters is adopted. The difference in the ability to distinguish signs between the next and previous lines means the difference in visual acuity to,.

There are several groups of people with visual impairment:

• The blind- these are people with a complete lack of visual sensations or having residual vision, and also retained the ability to light.
• Totally blind- a person with a complete lack of visual sensations.
• Partially blind- people who have only light.
• Weak-sighted- persons with visual acuity from, 5 to,. Their difference from the blind is that with a marked decrease in visual acuity, the visual analyzer remains the main source perception of information about the world around them and can be used as a lead in the learning process, including reading and letter.

Depending on the time of appearance of the defect, two categories of the blind are distinguished:

1. Blinded- people with congenital total blindness or blinded before the age of 3 years. They do not have visual representations, and the whole process of mental development is carried out in conditions of complete loss of the visual system.
2. Blinded- People who have lost sight at preschool age and later.

Problems with vision in children

Good eyesight is an indispensable condition for the health and full development of the child.It is through sight that the child acquires basic communicative skills, forms an idea about the world around him and his own vision. Hence the formation of the child's personality begins

If the severity of the child's vision is reduced, the development of the baby can be significantly hampered, so questions about the child's vision are extremely important. Problems with vision in the child primarily affect the parents, because they are responsible for the health of their child. Run these problems in any case impossible.

Causes

To treat visual disturbances in children is impossible, if one does not know their causes. So, the main factors of visual impairment in children are:

• Hereditary predisposition;
• Stress;
• Low hemoglobin;
• Non-observance of vision hygiene(reading in conditions of insufficient illumination, reading or playing on a mobile phone in a lying position, studying on a computer, etc.);
• Failure to observe the rules of visual safety: manipulation with sharp objects, addiction to look at the bright light without glasses.

Short-sightedness is the most frequent violation of children's vision. This is due to the fact that the age from 7 to 15 years is combined with increased visual loads (reading, writing, lessons in school). Failure to comply with the rules for watching TV and working with computers, genetic predisposition, nutritional deficiencies substances and other negative factors can lead to the development of strabismus, myopia, amblyopia and other problems with eyesight children.

Any visual impairment or eye disease in a child requires an immediate medical attention. Remember: the earlier treatment is started, the more chances for complete recovery and the absence of problems in the future, regardless of the cause of visual impairment in children. Preservation of vision in children is an important responsibility of parents.

Features of psychoemotional development

Disadvantages of visual perception lead to the formation in the child of fuzzy, unclear images and representations, adversely affect the development of mental operations(synthesis, analysis, comparison, generalization, etc.), which leads to difficulties when teaching in school, the assimilation of educational material. In addition, visual impairment significantly narrows the sphere of sensory cognition, thereby affecting the general the quality of emotions and feelings, their importance for life, and therefore on the formation of personal qualities rights. Often children feel doomed and useless, and this oppressed state leads to a slowdown in intellectual growth.

Psychologists note that children with visual impairments have the following characteristics:

• They have an elevated personal level of anxiety;
• Children have a weakly developed emotional-volitional sphere;
• Poor correlation of emotion with the expression of facial expressions;
• Insufficiently competent in the manifestation of emotions;
• Weakly understand the mimic expressions of emotions of other people.

Features of physical development

Visual impairment in children makes it difficult to orientate, restrain the formation of motor skills, leads to a reduction in motor and cognitive activity.Some children have a significant lag in physical development: the correct posture is broken when walking, running, in natural movements, in moving games, coordination and accuracy are violated movements.

Visual disturbance leads to secondary deviations in the physical development of children.Many children with visual impairment have a low level of development of tactile sensitivity and motor skills of the hands and fingers.

Because of the absence or sharp decline in vision, children can not spontaneously, by imitation of others, master various practical and practical actions, as occurs in normally seeing children. Because of this, the muscles of the hands are lethargic or, conversely, too strained. All this leads to a low level of development of tactile sensitivity and motor skills of the hands, adversely affects the formation of subject-practical activities.

Problems with vision in adults

All hereditary disorders in the human body, including the organs of vision, are transmitted from one from the parents, often through the generation, and the congenital develops already during the development of the fetus in the womb mothers. Acquired violations occur even after birth due to a number of reasons.

Below are listed eye diseases that occur in a person's adult people most often:

• Amblyopia(described above in the article);
• Cataract.This pathology of vision is the opacity of the lens, which could arise from the transferred in the period of fetal development of various infections, metabolic disorders, and also because of genetic violations. Cataracts are one of the main causes of both adult and childhood blindness: its prevalence doubles every 10 years after the age of 40.
• Glaucoma.This impaired vision has a characteristic symptom - increased intraocular pressure. Glaucoma can cause loss of all fields of vision in humans, as well as loss of the optic nerve itself. That is why timely diagnosis and treatment of this disease is important.

Causes

Good vision depends not only on the eye, but also on its interaction with the brain.The causes of visual impairment are divided into 3 groups:

1. Damage to parts of the eye or structural disturbances.
2. Violation of refraction, when the eye is unable to focus on the retina image.
3. The defeat of the part of the brain that is responsible for the interaction with the eye.

Factors that can cause visual impairment:

• Active mental activity leading to overstrain of the eye muscles and nerves.It is known that in the absence of the necessary amount of rest all these systems begin to work worse and vision is reduced.
• Long work at the computer.In this case, the person blinks less often, so the eyes do not get the proper moistening. Also it is worth remembering about the blue light that comes from the monitor. A number of studies have confirmed that it can have a negative effect on the retina.
• Poor or very bright indoor lighting.Lack of light, as well as its excess, have a negative impact on vision.
• Bright sun can damage the retina, and the absence of light - cause a lot of eye strain and provoke the development of myopia.
• Drinking and smoking. Toxins contained in alcoholic beverages and nicotine adversely affect the health of the whole organism. In particular, they impede blood circulation in the vessels of the eye, which leads to insufficient intake of oxygen to the tissues and visual impairment.
• Incorrect food.A diet in which there is a large amount of fats and "fast" carbohydrates, and almost no vitamins, contained in fresh fruits and vegetables, deprives our eyes of the nutrients necessary for normal view.

Features of psychoemotional development

The mentality of blind and visually impaired people does not differ significantly from the mentality of normally seeing people, but Some peculiarities in connection with the huge role played by vision in the processes of reflection and control activities.

Visual disturbance and its extreme form - blindness - considerably narrows the sphere of sensory cognition and can affect the degree of manifestation of individual emotions, their external expression and the level of development of individual species feelings.Many researchers note that blindness entails changes in the nature of emotional states in the side the prevalence of asthenic, suppressing the activity of the individual mood of sadness, anguish or increased irritability, affectivity.Such conclusions were made in the course of studies of late blind people who are seriously experiencing loss of vision, as well as blind and early blind people.

Features of physical development

Falling out or a deep disturbance of the function of sight, first of all, affects the fundamental property of the reflective activity of a person - activity.Particularly significant visual impairments hamper the orientation and search activity. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that the development of activity depends not only on the possibility to satisfy the need to learn everything surrounding, but also from external influences that contribute to the emergence of a motive of an approximate activities. The number of such impacts on visually impaired and especially blind people is sharply reduced due to violations of visual functions and due to this limited ability to move to space.

When a disability is given

Poor vision and the inability to do without outside help are also one of the reasons why a person is given a disability.

The definition of a group of vision disabilities is the prerogative of an ophthalmologist.

I group of disabilityIt is established at the fourth degree of disturbances in the work of the organ of vision. Criteria for this degree are complete blindness (zero vision of both eyes); visual acuity is better than the seeing eye is not higher, 4 diopters; narrowing the boundaries of the field of vision of both eyes to 10-0 ° from the fixation point.

II group of disabilityIt is established at the third degree of disturbances in the work of the visual analyzer. Its criteria are:

• visual acuity is better than seeing eye from, 5 to
• narrowing the boundaries of the field of vision of both eyes to 10-20 ° from the fixation point.

With the second group of disability, a person's working activity is possible only in specially created conditions. Usually these are societies of the blind, where people do their work with their hands.

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Third group of disabilitycan be established at the second degree of visual impairment, which are characterized by:

• decreased visual acuity better than seeing eyes from, to
• one-sided narrowing of the visual field boundaries less than 40 ° and no more than 20 ° from the fixation point.

Persons with disabilities in the third group are visually impaired people.

Minors with 1-3 disability groups are given the status of "disabled children".

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conclusions

Thus, the defect of visual impairment is a physical or psychological defect, which entails some deviations from normal development. Congenital and acquired defects refer to primary disorders that cause secondary functional disorders, which, in turn, have a negative impact on the development of a number of psychological processes in both adults and children.

Also read the characteristics of children with visual abnormalities, and how to get a disability in sight.