Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 54, Issue 5 P304-P316, Copyright © 1999 by The Gerontological Society of America

ARTICLES

Psychosocial consequences of age-related visual impairment: comparison with mobility-impaired older adults and long-term outcome

HW Wahl, O Schilling, F Oswald and V Heyl
German Centre for Research on Ageing, University of Heidelberg, Germany. wahl@dzfa.uni-heidelberg.de

Indices of behavioral competence (activities of daily living [ADLs], instrumental activities of daily living [IADLs], use of outdoor resources, leisure activity level) as well as emotional adaptation (subjective well-being, future orientation) were used to investigate the psychosocial consequences of age-related vision impairment in a threefold manner: (a) comparison of visually impaired and unimpaired elders, (b) comparison of visually impaired and mobility-impaired elders, and (c) long-term adaptation across 5 years. The research design used (a) 42 severely visually impaired elders, (b) 42 blind elders, (c) 42 mobility-impaired elders, and (d) 42 unimpaired elders. Compared with the mobility impaired, the visually impaired demonstrated lower IADL competence but no difference in emotional adaptation. The long-term adjustment of the visually impaired remained relatively stable in the behavioral domain, although lower compared with the unimpaired elders. Emotional adaptation decreased over the 5-year longitudinal interval in the visually impaired and the unimpaired group, but the decrease was generally higher in the visually impaired group. Conceptual ideas from environmental gerontology as well as psychological resilience are used to interpret these results.

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