A Descriptive Study to Assess the Psychosocial Problems and Coping Strategies of Blind Children

Absract Introduction: Blindness is among the most severe of all forms of physical disability. Without vision, blind people are cut off from a major segment of the social and physical environment to which they must adapt. This creates problems for mobility and everyday skilled activities for which vision is important. At the same time, in relating to other people, the blind can only guess at the meanings and intentions of non-verbal communication, and the social context in which these occur. Blindness may therefore create formidable social and psychological problems for the blind children. These problems are shown to have implications for the integration of the blind children into a sighted society, for the coping and adjustment of the blind, and for the attitudes of the sighted. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to assess the psychosocial problems of blind children, identify the coping strategies of blind children, find the relationship between psychosocial problems and coping strategies, find the association between psychosocial problems and selected socio-demographic variables, find the association between coping strategies and selected socio-demographic variables. Design : Descriptive research design Setting : Mangalajyothi Integrated School, Mangalore and Government School For Blind, Kasaragod. Sample : 30 blind children studying in selected schools. Interventions: Demographic Proforma, Psychosocial Problem Assessment Scale and Modified Coping Scale. Results: Among the subjects 53.33% elicited mild psychosocial problems. Interdependence problems(51.5%) were found to be high in Blind children. Assessment of Coping strategies revealed that majority(53.33%) of the blind children had efficient coping. Focusing on the positive coping mechanisms were used effectively by 79.6% of the blind children. The computed Karl Pearson’s correlation coefficient revealed a high negative correlation[(r) = -0.81] between psychosocial problems and coping strategies of blind children. Chi square test revealed that there was a significant association between psychosocial problems and coping strategies of blind child with gender of the child at 0.05 level of significance. Conclusion: The study identified that the majority of the blind children had mild psychosocial problems and were using effective coping strategies. Nursing personnel, as members of the health care team, have an important role in early identification of blindness in children and also assessing their problems in day to day life.