A Comparative Study of Social Anxiety of Blind and Visually-impaired People With Sighted People

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Social anxiety is a type of disorder in which a person becomes anxious and afraid in social interactions and situations. It is well known that 90% of a person’s social interactions are related to their vision, so blind people definitely have problems in all their social interactions. Methods: Leibovitz’s social anxiety scale is the only tool that is based on social situations. Participants were asked to answer the questions of the data collection tool. Normal subjects were also randomly selected from the normal population who are similar to the patient group in terms of age and gender. The results were analyzed with relevant statistical software. Results: The results show that the average score of social anxiety in the blind group is 43.27 and 44.25 in the sighted group. The average score of avoidance in the blind group is 39.83 and 41.66 in the sighted group. The amount of social anxiety between the blind and the visually impaired group has a significant difference compared to normal people. There is also a significant difference in the comparison between totally blind and mildly impaired people (P=0.027). The amount of avoidance is also different between totally blind and sighted people. There is a significance (P=0.024) and there is a statistical difference between the totally blind and mildly visually impaired (P=0.022). Conclusion: People with normal vision or mild vision loss experience more degrees of social anxiety as well as avoidance than totally blind people.