Ayah Abd Al-Hameed Mohammed Alhassan
Background : There is some evidence that wearing eyeglasses is associated with lower self-esteem or evaluations of the self, particularly relating to physical appearance and social interactions. Assessing self-esteem in myopic children is of interest because the onset of myopia frequently occurs at the same time that children acquire a sense of self in general and self-esteem in particular.
Method : This was cross-sectional facility-based study .The study involve 44 myopic child age 8-14 years from Makkah hospital and primary schools at Khartoum locality. The study used Self-Perception Profile for Children(SPPC) to asses self-esteem of myopic children.
Results : In this study 65.9% of the participants was boys ,75% of them were above 10 years of old ,most of them were wearing glasses for more than 3 year with glasses been prescribed at age above 7 years old .75% of the participating children found to have other family member wearing glasses ,93.9% of them were first-degree relatives. The results of self-esteem showed that boys have higher behavioral conduct and social competence than girls and younger children(age 8-10) have statistically significant higher athletic competence than older children(above 10).Regarding age at glasses prescription and duration of wearing glasses, it was found that children who have glasses prescribed at age 7-14 years have higher scholastic competence than other children .Presence of other family member wearing glasses shows significant effect on the self-esteem of myopic children since children who have other family member wearing glasses were found to have higher social competence than other children.
Conclusion : Self-esteem of myopic children was found to be affect by the age of the child and presence of other family member wearing glasses. Other factors might have some effect on the self-esteem but it was insignificant. All the factors didn't show significant effect on the global self-worth of the myopic children .