What are the Psychological Problems People Experience?
The vast majority of individuals face a disorder that can be considered a psychological diagnosis at least once in their lifetime. Psychological problems that people experience are usually related to the difficulties they face in life. Give an example of these difficulties; the loss of a loved one, lack of self-confidence, traumas experienced in early childhood, and loneliness. Impossible goals and unfounded expectations that individuals set for themselves can also cause psychological disorders.
Psychological disorders should be evaluated on an individual basis. An event that does not affect one person can have a traumatic effect on another. Age factor, person's experiences and cultural structure are also distinguishing factors in psychological disorders. If we give an example of the age factor; While a 15-year-old will be more sensitive to positive or negative criticism from his environment, a 25-year-old may respond to criticism more maturely. In addition, mental problems such as schizophrenic personality disorder, bipolar mood disorder and paranoid personality disorder, in which genetic factors are effective, are also factors that affect the psychological health of the person. Examples of the most common psychological disorders are depression, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, social phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders.
What kind of difficulties do the Visually Impaired and Blind People face?
Visually impaired and blind person may not be able to continue their lives as easily as sighted people. The main reason for this is accessibility problems in meeting basic needs. To give an example of these accessibility problems; Suppose you are going to a restaurant. It will be quite easy for a sighted individual to open the menu and examine the food options, right? Unfortunately, this is not so easy for the visually impaired and blind person. If he is going to a restaurant with a friend, he has to ask a friend to read the menu and the contents of the meal to him, if he goes alone, to a waiter. While even this situation is disturbing enough for the visually impaired and blind, imagine how bad an experience it would be for the waiter to hastily read the menu to him or to make the blind person feel that he was uncomfortable reading the menu! This is not only true in restaurants, but the lack of an audio description option for the TV show or movie he watches, not providing adequate educational tools, or not presenting the book or newspaper he is reading with audio description or Braille Alphabet options will also cause similar bad experiences for the visually impaired and blind person.
What are the Psychological Effects of the Difficulties Experienced by Visually Impaired and Blind Person?
The psychological problems experienced by the visually impaired and blind person are not caused by the person's insufficient or lack of vision, if we put aside the psychological disorders of genetic origin, they may be damaged psychologically as a result of the difficulties they encounter in life.
We have referred to one of the difficulties faced by the visually impaired and blind person as accessibility problems and the difficulty in meeting the basic needs created by these problems. These problems cause the visually impaired and blind person to feel dependent on others. Because when withdrawing money from the bank, someone has to be with him and read the articles on the page, even while taking a shower, because Braille Alphabet is not used in most personal care products, someone has to show him shampoo and shower gel, even when he goes grocery shopping, the visually impaired and blind person encounters similar problems. Therefore, they may feel insecure, inadequate, unhappy, shy, angry and depressed. These feelings are very likely to turn the visually impaired and blind person into an introverted individual who refuses to socialize and interfere in life.
These accessibility problems experienced by the visually impaired and blind person can make the person feel excluded. The reason for this feeling of exclusion is that our world is 80% seeing and 20% hearing oriented. Since the world of the visually impaired and blind person is hearing-oriented, it means that we only open 20% of our world to them. The pain caused by the feeling of being excluded is “Why me?”, “Is this my punishment?” It causes them to develop self-blaming defense mechanisms. These defense mechanisms can put the person in an aggressive mood and undermine the desire to join society.
So what can I personally do for this situation?
If you even asked yourself this question after reading the above article, you have taken a big step. I want you to know that when the visually impaired and blind person can continue his life on his own, and participate in social activities like sighted individuals, their obstacles disappear and they become free. If there is a visually impaired and blind person in your environment, you can help him/her without realizing if you participate in social activities as much as possible and establish healthy communication with the blind and visually-imparied person. What I said is very simple, isn't it? Don't we always do the same with people who can see? Why do we refrain from doing these with visually impaired and blind person by putting them in the category of “a different person”? What we call "shyness" makes them feel excluded, and that's where the psychological problems start.
This shyness may be due to the fact that you approach the visually impaired and blind person in a hurtful way without realizing it. To exemplify, you are afraid to ask hurtful questions, which might lead you to avoid contacts with blind and visually-impaired people. To get an insight into this problem, you can read our article titled ‘Questions That Should Not be Asked to the Blind and Visually Impaired’ in our blog and learn how to communicate correctly with a visually impaired and blind person individual. Again, many articles on our blog will save you from these reservations. (Click to access our article.)
In this article, we have included the difficulties experienced by visually impaired and blind and the psychological problems that these difficulties may cause. None of these challenges are insoluble problems. As the BlindLook team, we are working to resolve these issues. As these problems are solved, the psychological problems caused by the difficulties experienced by the visually impaired and blind person will decrease considerably.
Author: İlayda Çicek / BlindLook Team
