Hysterical Amblyopia in Children

Prevalence of psychosocial disturbances in children with nonorganic visual loss

“…This is comparable to other studies. 3,7,11 There was a variety of presenting complaints, the most common of which was poor or blurry vision. Some children were referred because they failed vision screening.…”

“…3,6,7,[11][12][13] For example, Yasuna 3 studied 26 children who were mistakenly diagnosed with amblyopia. He concluded that many of these children had a pathologic pattern of school and home adjustment difficulties; however, he did not give details of his observations.…”

Brief therapy for monocular hysterical blindness in childhood

“…All that remained was for a stressful environment to manifest itself in the form of a threatening school life. The selection of the particular type of symptom was probably related to suggestibility, as in most cases of conversion reactions [8,16,17], in this case stemming from Kathy's history of myopia and the recent history of her great-grandmother's cataract. Extreme ambivalence seems likely to explain the occurrence of monocular symptoms instead of the more common binocular hysterical blindness.…”

Practical clinical approaches to functional visual loss

“…Functional visual loss may be seen in a continuum of clinical settings, from frank malingering [3][4][5] with the aim of secondary gain, to a factitious disorder which is symptom-focused or is hysteria-based [6][7][8][9] with subconscious expression of visual symptoms. FVL may be seen in any age group 10 but is seen in 1-5% of referrals to ophthalmologists.…”