Is perceived social support more important than visual acuity for clinical depression and anxiety in patients with age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy?
Laura Hernández-Moreno, Hugo Senra, Natacha Moreno and 1 others
PMID 33657906WHAT IT FOUND
Perceived social support, not visual acuity, was independently linked to anxiety and depression in patients with age-related macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy.
Poorer social support predicted higher mental health symptom levels, suggesting clinicians should assess support networks alongside vision.
Key findings
01Perceived social support was independently associated with levels of anxiety and depression in patients with age-related eye diseases.
02Visual acuity was not significantly associated with depression or anxiety in the multivariate models.
03Being female and having poorer perceived social support were associated with greater levels of anxiety.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The sample size was small (71 participants), which may have limited the ability to detect associations with visual acuity. There was no control group of people without eye disease, so it is unclear if the levels of anxiety and depression are specific to this population. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot determine whether poor social support causes mental health problems or vice versa. Participants were excluded if they had cognitive impairment or communication problems, which may limit generalisability to more severely affected patients.
Declared interests
The work was partially supported by Essilor Portugal Lda (an eyewear company) and FCT Strategic Funding. The authors declared no other conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that visual acuity has no impact on mental health. The study found that social support was a stronger independent predictor in this specific sample, but univariate correlations did show weak links between acuity and depression. The lack of significance in the multivariate model may be due to the small sample size rather than a true absence of effect.