Personal and Professional Reactions to Blindness from Diabetic Retinopathy

The author, a blind psychiatric nurse who offers professional counseling to newly blinded individuals, discusses adjustment to blindness from both professional and personal points of view. She considers the major aspects of adjustment to blindness to be grieving (not only over loss of vision but also, for the diabetic, future complications of the condition and a shortened life expectancy), revaluation (value change, the development of realistic goals), the independence-dependence conflict, stigma (societal prejudice and ascribing to blind persons stereotyped characteristics), communication without visual cues, and identity integration or the state of self-actualization by which the individual learns to live with his disability.