Prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in visually impaired children

This study was done to measure psychiatric morbidity and associated sociodemographic variables among visually impaired children. 92 students of age range 6 to 20 years from four schools for the blind, in Ranchi, were screened with verbal Hindi translation of General Health Questionnaire 60. Diagnostic Interview Schedule Parent version was applied to establish psychiatric diagnosis on primary caretakers of those who scored above cutoff. Fourteen scored above cut off and psychiatric diagnoses of 8 children were established. The prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among visually impaired children was found to be 8.69% No sociodemographic variable was associated with the occurrence of psychiatric illness.