Who can benefit from Vision Therapy

Won’t eyeglasses alone help?

Eyeglasses focus light onto the back of the eye. They don’t change how your eyes work together as a team. They don’t change how your eyes track across a page. A hearing aid, for example, might help someone hear better, but it does not help someone understand a new language.

Who else can this help?

1. People who have suffered a concussion, brain injury from a trauma such as a car accident, or from a stroke, can regain visual skills that were lost, because vision skills exist in the brain rather than in the eye.
2. Adults that have an eye turn (strabismus) that began in adulthood, or adults that have amblyopia because one or both eyes have not had the opportunity to develop vision, can benefit. Some doctors mistakenly say that past a certain age, (usually 7 or 9 is cited) that vision cannot be developed. That is simply untrue. In the same way that someone can develop the ability to learn a language or learn how to drive a car, even adults have the ability to gain visual abilities. It may take longer, because the wrong way to see things has become embedded, but it is very possible.
3. Vision Therapy helps those who have been diagnosed with convergence insufficiency and convergence excess. It helps individuals with accommodative (focusing) problems.
4. Often people have been given a label such as ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, or SLP (Specific Learning Problem). It is our opinion that 80% of those who have been given these diagnoses, have an underlying vision issue. Solve the vision problem, and we have solved the underlying diagnosis. Children or adults no longer need the stimulants that have been prescribed. Ritalin, Concerta, Strattera, Adderrol, Vyvanse, etc., are all stimulants. Why give a stimulant to someone that already seems over stimulated? The answer that pediatricians, neurologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists often give is that these stimulants somehow give an “opposite” (paradoxical) effect. There are no long term studies that demonstrate that treating these problems with medication solves the problem. It merely masks the problem.
5. Children who become more nearsighted each year often have an underlying visual problem. Vision Therapy enables the person to learn how to use their visual system so that doesn’t continue to happen. Eyeglasses or contact lenses compensate for the fact that someone has become more nearsighted. Eyeglasses don’t correct the problem. Many people realize this because their child’s sight becomes worse each year.

Those who have had Vision Therapy report improvements such as better focusing, reduced eye strain, and improved coordination. They have better reading comprehension, reduced eye strain, improved depth perception, and enhanced visual tracking. Working on a computer is easier and takes less visual effort. Overall, patients report a better quality of life.

Similar to the fact that each doctor prescribes medication based on their schooling and their experience, each doctor that prescribed Vision Therapy may do it slightly differently. Our approach is curriculum based, much as a school curriculum. There is a specific order to the therapy. Basic skills are developed first and then higher skills are developed. Patients who are consistent in their therapy sessions and do their home activities attain results. Our patients often have life changing benefits.