Vision Therapy Treatment

What is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is a tailored program of visual exercises and activities meticulously designed and supervised by a developmental optometrist to enhance visual abilities and processing. It’s a practical approach for addressing various eye-related problems and can be recommended after a thorough assessment of the visual system. The program is unique to each patient based on detailed standardized test results, specific symptoms, and personal needs.

A vision therapy session employs a variety of tools such as lenses, prisms, filters, occluders, specialized instruments, and computer programs. These tools are used during in-office treatments and combined with daily exercises at home. The in-office sessions focus on helping patients recognize their visual shortcomings in a controlled environment, teaching them strategies to improve visual performance. The home-based aspect of the therapy aims to reinforce these new skills until they become second nature.

A person undergoing vision therapy might have experienced a range of symptoms indicative of various visual challenges. These symptoms are crucial in determining the therapy’s need for and focus. Common symptoms include difficulty maintaining place while reading, often losing track, or using a finger as a guide. Headaches during close-up work, eyes that burn, itch, or water excessively, and a tendency to fall asleep while reading are telltale signs.

Further indications include complaints of blurred or double vision, frequent skipping or repeating lines during reading, and the presence of an eye turn or lazy eye. Those undergoing vision therapy might also struggle with attention span while reading, have trouble completing assignments timely, or find their vision worsening as the day progresses. Excessive time spent on homework, poor handwriting, and experiencing dizziness or nausea during work are also common visual issues. Other notable symptoms include the tendency to tilt the head or close one eye when reading, difficulty copying from the whiteboard, an aversion to reading, and omitting small words while reading. In more severe cases, individuals may write with an upward or downward tilt, misalign digits or numbers in columns, have poor reading comprehension, or hold reading material too close. Challenges in accurately judging distances, general clumsiness, motion sickness, being mistakenly labeled as “lazy,” a “slow learner,” or having behavioral problems like AD(H)D are also signs that vision therapy might be beneficial.