Choice of Counsellor, Blind or Vision Impaired
Sight Loss Counselling
Adults Mental Health
You can Choose a Therapist who is Vision Impaired or Blind
Free Funding Applications, Self-Pay, Employment Support, Professional Organisations.
Sight Loss Counselling for Adults with Mental or Emotional Health Conditions due to becoming Blind or Vison Impaired.
Counsellors & Psychotherapists who have Impaired Vision or are Blind.
Affordable, Professional Disability Focused Therapy from Any Device.
Text, Chat & Video. Convenient, Discreet, Professional Online Therapy Anytime, Anywhere.
Expertise
Sight loss counselling can help you with your emotional & mental health; our therapists work with people with varying degrees of sight loss & adults who are blind. The therapy focuses on assisting you to overcome various psychological barriers.
Our team understands that living with reduced sight can be difficult, but we know it can be manageable. Our treatment plans focus on helping you think more clearly & gain a purpose.
One of the most important aspects of psychotherapy is the relationship you form with your therapist. Using therapists with sight loss will help you experience a sense of belonging and connection with similar challenges to yours.
Applying expertise and care, our specialist therapists support adults, teenagers, family members, couples & carers with expert counselling.
Sight Loss Counselling
Adults Mental Health
You can Choose a Therapist who is Vision Impaired or Blind
Your Service
Free Funding Applications, Self-Pay, Employment Support, Professional Organisations.
Sight Loss Counselling for Adults with Mental or Emotional Health Conditions due to becoming Blind or Vision Impaired.
Counsellors & Psychotherapists who have Impaired Vision or are Blind.
Affordable, Professional Disability Focused Therapy from Any Device. Text, Chat & Video. Convenient, Discreet, Professional Online Therapy Anytime, Anywhere.
Expertise
Sight loss counselling can help you with your emotional & mental health; our therapists work with people with varying degrees of sight loss & adults who are blind. The therapy focuses on assisting you to overcome various psychological barriers.
Our team understands that living with reduced sight can be difficult, but we know it can be manageable. Our treatment plans focus on helping you think more clearly & gain a purpose.
Culture
One of the most important aspects of psychotherapy is the relationship you form with your therapist. Using therapists who are blind or vision impaired will help you experience a sense of belonging and connection with similar challenges to yours.
Applying expertise and care, our specialist therapists support adults, teenagers, family members, couples & carers with expert counselling.
Therapy
Sight Loss Counselling is with therapists with lived experience to understand the complexity of sight loss or blindness. Our therapy supports you with mental & emotional health issues to allow you to have a brighter future.
Our Service supports you with your mental health, whether pre-existing issues have worsened or a new condition that stems from sight loss. Our specialist therapists understand the problems a life-long condition can have on your mental & emotional health.
Our treatment plans focus on helping you think more clearly & gain a purpose.
Therapy
Sight Loss Counselling is with therapists with lived experience to understand the complexity of sight loss or blindness. Our therapy supports you with mental & emotional health issues to allow you to have a brighter future.
Our Service supports you with your mental health, whether pre-existing issues have worsened or a new condition that stems from sight loss. Our specialist therapists understand the problems a life-long condition can have on your mental & emotional health.
Our treatment plans focus on helping you think more clearly & gain a purpose.
Mental Health
No matter how severe your vision has become, you may experience emotional and behavioural changes resulting from your sight loss. These changes can include extreme mood swings and anxiety disorders.
Some people have a combination of emotional reactions to becoming blind or vision impaired; they can include: insomnia, loss of appetite, palpitations, visual hallucinations, aggression, anger, tension, frustration, disorganisation, irritability, restlessness, inability to concentrate & apathy.
Sight loss counselling with DisabilityPlus enables you to receive quality counselling from a professional therapist who understands what you are going through.
Mental Health
No matter how severe your vision has become, you may experience emotional and behavioural changes resulting from your sight loss. These changes can include extreme mood swings and anxiety disorders.
Some people have a combination of emotional reactions to becoming blind or vision impaired; they can include: insomnia, loss of appetite, palpitations, visual hallucinations, aggression, anger, tension, frustration, disorganisation, irritability, restlessness, inability to concentrate & apathy.
Sight loss counselling with DisabilityPlus enables you to receive quality counselling from a professional therapist who understands what you are going through.
Impact
Sight loss can affect how you live daily and how you see yourself and relate to others. You might feel hopeless about the future and not burden others with your feelings. These are typical responses; however, support, information, and effective counselling can help remove your feelings of dependence.
The emotional impact of losing sight or becoming permanently blind can make you feel sad, frightened, confused, worried, angry, & overwhelmed.
Our Sight Loss Counselling service with specialist therapists can help you through your journey with shared first-hand experiences.
Emotional Impact
Sight loss can affect how you live daily and how you see yourself and relate to others. You might feel hopeless about the future and not burden others with your feelings. These are typical responses; however, support, information, and effective counselling can help remove your feelings of dependence.
The emotional impact of losing sight or becoming permanently blind can make you feel sad, frightened, confused, worried, angry, & overwhelmed.
Our Sight Loss Counselling service with specialist therapists can help you through your journey with shared first-hand experiences.
Funding Options
Referrals
Our Sight Loss Counselling referrals cater for all types of requirements, you can contact us directly for more information or complete a self-referral form to move to the next step. We reply to you within 24 hours Monday to Friday.
Sight Loss Counselling Self-Referral Form, CLICK HERE
NHS Applications
Sight Loss Counselling Applications for Free NHS Funding
You firstly Self-Refer by using this link: NHS Self-Referral
Once you have completed the form, you will be asked to attend a free counselling session; this session helps us make an application for you.
No NHS application is guaranteed to be successful; we do, though, support most NHS regions in the UK.
A typical timescale to start the sessions is 12 weeks from the date of the assessment session.
Please let us know if you have any questions by contacting us on the form below this section.
Professional Organisations
We support many organisations with Sight Loss Counselling, including solicitors and employment support, all the way through to smaller organisations that need help.
Contact us to find out more.
Self-Pay Plans
Sight Loss Counselling Sessions are 50 minutes long and booked in advance.
We offer self-pay plans, including pay-by-session & saver packs where you can buy groups of 3 & 6 sessions at reduced price points.
Single Session – £85
3 Session Saver – £210 (£70)
6 Session Saver – £360 (£60)
Please contact us if you are in financial difficulties.
Sight Loss Counselling Self-Referral Form, CLICK HERE
Mixed Plans
Being a major service, we can offer Sight Loss Counselling with a mixed plan. This means you can start paying privately & then if or when funding comes in you can switch to a funded model of counselling.
Contact us to find out more
Sight Loss Counselling Self-Referral Form, CLICK HERE
Contact us
Phone
+44 7539 877357
info@disabilityplus.co.uk
Head Office Address
DisabilityPlus House, 25 Pembroke Avenue, Hersham, KT12 4NT
General Information
Interesting General Information
- Globally, at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment. In at least 1 billion – or almost half – of these cases, vision impairment could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed.
- The leading causes of vision impairment and blindness are uncorrected refractive errors and cataracts.
- The majority of people with vision impairment and blindness are over the age of 50 years; however, vision loss can affect people of all ages.
- Vision impairment poses an enormous global financial burden with the annual global costs of productivity losses associated with vision impairment from uncorrected myopia and presbyopia alone.
Definitions
The International Classification of Diseases 11 (2018) classifies vision impairment into two groups, distance and near presenting vision impairment.
Distance vision impairment:
- Mild –visual acuity worse than 6/12 to 6/18
- Moderate –visual acuity worse than 6/18 to 6/60
- Severe –visual acuity worse than 6/60 to 3/60
- Blindness –visual acuity worse than 3/60
Near vision impairment:
- Near visual acuity worse than N6 or M.08 at 40cm.
A person’s experience of vision impairment varies depending upon many different factors. This includes for example, the availability of prevention and treatment interventions, access to vision rehabilitation (including assistive products such as glasses or white canes), and whether the person experiences problems with inaccessible buildings, transport and information.
Prevalence
Globally, at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment. In at least 1 billion – or almost half – of these cases, vision impairment could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed.
These 1 billion people include those with moderate or severe distance vision impairment or blindness due to unaddressed refractive error (88.4 million), cataracts (94 million), glaucoma (7.7 million), corneal opacities (4.2 million), diabetic retinopathy (3.9 million), and trachoma (2 million), as well as near vision impairment caused by unaddressed presbyopia (826 million).
In terms of regional differences, the prevalence of distance vision impairment in low- and middle-income regions is estimated to be four times higher than in high-income regions. With regards to near vision, rates of unaddressed near vision impairment are estimated to be greater than 80% in western, eastern and central sub-Saharan Africa, while comparative rates in high-income regions of North America, Australasia, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific are reported to be lower than 10%.
Population growth and ageing are expected to increase the risk that more people acquire vision impairment.
For more information on sight loss please CLICK HERE for the NHS information page.
Living with Sight Loss
Having to deal with sight loss or low vision is one of the challenges the visually impaired face when living life.
Blind individuals are just like anyone else, but they just can’t see. They have built a world around us that serves the majority. That means that any individual different from the average, such as the visually impaired, faces difficulties because they’re not what is considered to be average.
Access to information: The major sensory organ of a person is their eyes. One glimpse around us is enough to make us realize how visual is most of the information in our environment.
Timetables in train stations, signs indicating the right way or potential danger, and a billboard advertising a new product in the market are all the visual types of information we all come across daily.
Most of this information is inaccessible for the blind and the visually impaired, inhibiting their independence since access to information signifies autonomy.
Overly helpful individuals: It’s widespread for sighted individuals, strangers, friends or family to be extremely excited to help a visually impaired person. This behaviour frequently assumes that the blind or low-vision individual requires assistance, although this might not reflect reality.
Blind people might perform a regular task slower, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of completing it. Rushing to help the visually impaired without asking or being asked to do so might make them feel helpless instead of independent. Moreover, not allowing visually impaired individuals to perform a task alone does not give them the room to learn how to do so independently.
Societal stigma: Being blind in a world suited for the sighted means multiple everyday mishaps will occur. Stumbling upon an office chair that wasn’t neatly tucked under the desk or knocking a glass off the table because it was left on edge are minor accidents that can happen, and that’s okay. However, such mishaps tend to be perceived by sighted individuals as the inability of the visually impaired to perform tasks. In reality, they stem from the inaccessibility of our world.
Blindness or low vision does not indicate the intelligence of the individual nor how sad their life is. Just because the sighted cannot imagine their world without vision does not mean that the visually impaired have an unhappy life because of their visual condition.
Finding and keeping a job: Work is different if you’re visually impaired. Considering the lack of accessible work and working spaces, one can imagine why hiring a visually impaired individual would be regarded as a company liability.
This hurts the confidence and emotional well-being of the visually impaired while it cripples their economic independence. Having little to no opportunity to support oneself, blind or low vision individuals are hindered from their freedom.
Leisure: The lack of accessibility for the visually impaired is central to some issues the blind or low visual individuals face.
Leisure is another one on the list.
A limited number of inclusive/accessible activities for the visually impaired are as simple as a museum visit. Moreover, accessible books are not abundant either. According to the World Blind Union, “more than 90% of all published material is not accessible to the blind or partially sighted.” The internet is in a new era; we all surf the internet for fun. It is not fully accessible either since numerous websites disregard their visually impaired visitors and do not curate content accessible for blind and low-vision individuals.
Considering these points and many more not listed here, one can see the limited leisure options for the visually impaired.
Often living in isolation: Considering all of the above, it’s not a surprise that living with a visual impairment might signify, often, living in isolation. Dealing with sight loss already is a challenge in itself. The lack of emotional support at diagnosis centres, the limited accessibility to activities and information, the societal stigma and the lack of unemployment frequently lead to blind or low-vision individuals in isolation.
This last point illustrates how the problem for the visually impaired is not their blindness or lower vision in itself but their segregation from anyone else.
Blind Veterans – for more information and support, CLICK HERE for the blind veteran’s homepage of their website.
