Is there correlation between ADD/ADHD and vision problems?

When meeting with parents or guardians or our patients, this is what we hear when they are discuss thier child and ADD/ADHD:

"You think you are doing the right thing when you are putting your child through all these tests and trying to figure out what's wrong with them. You ask yourself questions like, 'Why isn’t he doing well in school?...He's a smart kid...I know he can do it...Is he lazy?' It's so quick and easy to slap the ADD or ADHD label on the child and medicate them. Where this might work for some children, we never really saw a result."

Does this situation sound familiar to what you and your child have gone through? If so, let me help you understand how symptoms for ADD/ADHD and vision problems are often the same.

Below is a chart that better helps your visualize the similarities.

                                  *DSM IV – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
                                              **American Optometric Association

Due to these similarities, some children with vision problems are mislabeled as having ADHD. COVD states:

A recent study by researchers at the Children's Eye Center, University of San Diego, uncovered a relationship between a common vision disorder, convergence insufficiency, and ADHD. The study "showed that children with convergence insufficiency are three times as likely to be diagnosed  with ADHD than children without the disorder."

Dr. Granet of the Children's Eye Center commented, "We don't know if convergence insufficiency makes ADHD worse or if convergence insufficiency is misdiagnosed as ADHD.  What we do know is that more research must be done on this subject and that patients diagnosed with ADHD should also be evaluated for convergence insufficiency and treated accordingly."

What can we learn from this? Before we mislabel our children, they should be evaluated for convergence insufficiency and treated accordingly. If this article relates to you, don't hesitate to call our office to find out more information and set up an appointment: 615-386-3036.

Welcome to Optometric Physicians First Blog Post!

Optometric Physicians Vision Therapy is excited to announce we are starting a blog! Our passion is to improve the quality of life for every person that walks through our door and we wanted to be able to reach as many of you as possible. We also started a Facebook group called Nashville Vision Therapy. We will be posting a blog each week of different topics relating to Vision Therapy. Feedback and questions are much appreciated.

Let's start off this blog right and start with the basics! What is Vision Therapy? Vision therapy, visual training, or vision training is an individualized, supervised treatment program designed to correct visual-motor and/or perceptual deficiencies. Vision therapy trains the entire visual system which includes eyes, brain and body. The goal of VT (vision therapy) is to train the brain to use the eyes to receive information effectively, comprehend it quickly and react appropriately. You are probably wondering what Vision Therapy includes. Vision therapy sessions include non-surgical procedures designed to enhance the brain's ability to control eye alignment, eye movements, focusing abilities, and eye teaming. State-of-the-art technology and software allows vision therapist to offer patients challenging programs for the enhancement of eye teaming, focusing, binocularity, fusional skills, convergence skills, and perceptual skills. Vision therapy programs are individually designed for each person for maximum improvement. Each office session is approximately 30-45 minutes of one-on-one training with the vision therapist and at home exercises are given to help with self-reinforcing. Studies show that 1 out of 5 (20%) school age children have an undiagnosed visual issue that affects learning. This percentage dramatically increases within the special education, learning disabled and remedial reading populations, where as many as 70% of these students have a significant visual component to their learning problems.

Vision Therapy can help the following behaviors or disorders:

• Lazy eye, crossed-eyes, or wandering eyes
• Turn or tilts head to see
• Squinting or covering one eye to see
• Excessive blinking
• Short attention span (diagnosed with ADHD or ADD)
• Daydreaming
• Poor handwriting
• Poor visual/motor skills (hand-eye coordination)
• Frequently drops things or bumps into things
• Omits words while reading
• Reverses words or numbers
• Frequently looses place while reading
• Uses finger to keep place while reading
• Complains of headaches, eyestrain, dizziness or nausea while reading
• Complains of double vision
• Birth injury
• Brain trauma

Thank you for joining us on our first blog! We can’t wait to teach you more about what we are passionate about, Vision Therapy!