Explaining the Relationship between Three Eye Diseases and Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults

Association between visual impairment and depression in the elderly: a systematic review

“…GDS-15 is a screening tool for depression rather than an assessment scale providing a clinical diagnosis of depression; the level of depressive symptomatology is related to the level of depression. In these studies, the cut-off for depression ranged into four or more (21) , five or more (22,23) , six or more (24)(25)(26) , and 11 or more (27) . Another questionnaire that was used was CES-D, used in two studies (4,12) .…”

“…Some studies considered visual acuity less than 20/70 (based on ICD-9 and -10) as VI (4,23,25) ; however, only one study measured near and distant visual acuities (4) . Two studies considered VI as visual acuity less than 20/40 or visual field defects (22,23) . One study analyzed blindness (visual acuity of 20/400 or worse) (26) and another analyzed visual loss with a subjective questionnaire of self-reported activities that the person can or cannot answer because of his vision (12) ; it was not possible to perform meta-analysis with this variable because visual acuity was measured using different methods in each article.…”

“…Mobility in one study was measured using the Life Space assessment (LS-C-120), a questionnaire that records the frequency of going to diffe rent level spaces at home and outside in a month (22) . Disability was also analyzed in one study (27) using CDS-30 and in another using the Oregon Administrative Rules (OAR) instrument (12) .…”

“…One study compared three ocular diseases as the cause of VI (22) . Age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) was compared in two other studies to the prevalence of other ocular diseases (ARMD 61.4%, cataract 31.4%, glaucoma 21.4%, diabetic retinopathy 15.7%, and others 5.7%) in visually impaired participants (21,27) .…”

A view on glaucoma—are we seeing it clearly?

“…After all, vision is the sense that people fear losing most. 4 Glaucoma certainly impacts on quality-of-life and state-of-mind 5,6 but little is known about the precise relationship between functional measurements made in the clinic and patient's visual disability. This isn't surprising because untangling the visual component from all the other factors that contribute to everyday visually guided tasks such as mobility, driving, searching for items, recognising faces, and reading is difficult to do.…”