FRIDAY, Aug. 24 (HealthDay News) -- Patients recently diagnosed with glaucoma are more likely to be depressed if they have worse self-reported visual function, but measures of visual field and visual acuity are not associated with depression, researchers report in the August issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology.
Henry D. Jampel, M.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues analyzed survey data from 607 patients who were asked about mood, anxiety and depression. In addition, the researchers measured subjects' vision-related activities of daily living and their visual field and visual acuity.
Although the authors thought that objective measures of visual function would be associated with depression and anxiety, these clinical measures were associated with few of the mood indicators on the survey. However, subjects' self-reported perception of their visual ability was correlated with each item on the depression scale.
"There are two possible hypotheses for the association we found between self-reported visual function and responses to questions about mood and depression. First is that the patient's perceived poorer vision results in depression, and the second is that depression leads to a set of poorer responses to questions on the VAQ (vision-related quality of life questionnaire)," the authors write.
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