Mental health and vision difficulty in adults: a population-based analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To investigate associations between self-reported vision difficulties and mental health diagnoses in adults from a nationally representative sample. DESIGN: A retrospective, cross-sectional population-based analysis. METHODS: Using data from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey, we included adult participants who provided self-reported vision data. The primary outcome was the association between vision difficulty and anxiety or depression diagnoses. Secondary outcomes pertained to symptom severity and receiving medications or therapy. Additional analyses explored the relationships between mental health variables and eyewear use. Multivariable regression models were conducted, adjusting for sociodemographic confounders. RESULTS: A total of 27,640 adults were included, of which 5 210 (19%) reported vision difficulties. Adults self-reporting vision difficulty had higher odds of an anxiety disorder (OR = 2.00, 95% CI = [1.82, 2.19]; p < 0.001) and more severe anxiety symptoms per the GAD-7 (OR = 2.67, 95% CI = [2.44, 2.92]; p < 0.001). Likewise, adults self-reporting vision difficulty had higher odds of depression (OR = 2.31, 95% CI = [2.12, 2.52]; p < 0.001) and more severe depressive symptoms per the PHQ-8 (OR = 2.90, 95% CI = [2.67, 3.15]; p < 0.001). Moreover, self-reported vision difficulty was associated with higher odds of taking medication for a mental health condition (OR = 1.71, 95% CI = [1.35, 2.16]; p < 0.001) and receiving therapy (OR = 1.71, 95% CI = [1.53, 1.91]; p < 0.001). Wearing glasses or contact lenses was largely associated with higher odds of the mental health variables studied. CONCLUSION: There are robust associations between self-reported vision difficulty and psychosocial well-being, with individuals reporting vision difficulty more likely to report greater severity of anxiety or depressive symptoms. Similar associations were observed among individuals who wore glasses or contact lenses. Increased collaboration between eye care and mental health professionals is needed.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".