Investigation of psychiatric symptoms, life satisfaction and ways of coping in the blind

Aim: The primary goal of this study is to demonstrate the relationship of blindness and psychiatric symptoms and, the secondary goal is to investigate the life satisfaction levels and ways of coping in the blind.Material and Method: Totally 110 blind who were available between June 2009 and September 2009 were included in the study. Socio-demographic data form, brief symptom inventory, life satisfaction inventory, ways of coping inventory were used as the data collection tools. Statistical analysis of the veri as performed via SPSS 12 program.Results: Only 17% of the participants mentioned chronic physical and 5% mentioned chronic psychiatric disturbance. As the distribution of psychiatric symptoms was evaluated, within the BSI (brief symptom inventory) sub-inventories, especially points of interpersonal sensitivity, hostility and paranoid symptoms seemed to be partially higher. Life satisfaction levels were observed to be moderate or high in general. Life satisfaction levels were found to be significantly correlated with education levels and having an occupation of the socio-demographic data. As the ways of coping are evaluated, it seems that 50% of the blind use the self-confident approaching style. When the ways of coping and psychiatric symptom groups of the participants were evaluated, a significant correlation was found only between the hostility group and the ways of coping.Conclusion: The blind were identified to be at a good level in means of physical and psychiatric health status. Although there have been many studies reporting contradictory results, our findings are especially in consistence with the studies declaring a similarity between the handicapped and the other people. Our findings confirm that being devoid of the sense of sight makes the individual more paranoid, hostile and sensitive. Contrary to expectations, life satisfaction being at a good level in general is in consistence with the literature. Ways of coping inventory data show that the blind use the positive styles in coping and can manage the stressful conditions. More often use of the self-confident approach as a way of coping in individuals not having chronic psychiatric disturbances is in consistence with the literature and, offers us important data in terms of resistance power and allostatic compliance of the blind. It?s thought that there?s no relationship between psychiatric symptoms and ways of coping except the hostility group in the blind and, that they do not influence each other. The group having higher hostility points was observed as having used the social support referring style as a way of coping more often. The number of the participants was not high enough to evaluate the relationship between life satisfaction inventory and ways of coping inventory.Key Words: Blind, life satisfaction, life satisfaction inventory, ways of coping, ways of coping inventory, brief symptom inventory, BSI.