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Too much stress may affect your child’s vision.

Stress is a physical, mental or emotional reaction caused by a change that disturbs or interferes with the body’s normal equilibrium. When children are under stress, they may show changes in behaviour which may include:

Irritability or moodiness

Clinginess, being unwilling
to let parents out of sight

Crying

Withdrawal from activities they used to love doing

Aggressive behaviour

Regression to earlier behaviours such as thumb sucking

School refusal

Unwillingness to participate in family or school activities

Streff syndrome is not an abnormality with the physiology of the eyes. Rather it has been associated with the brain and how it processes what you see.

For that reason, Streff syndrome is considered a type of amblyopia, which is psychogenic and involuntary in nature. Psychogenic means “the origin is in the mind” or more accurately in the parts of the brain that help process vision.

Streff Syndrome

Too much stress may affect your child’s vision.

Blurred vision of varying amounts which can come and go but usually stay blurry

Headaches

Blurred vision at distance and at near

A sudden decrease in academic performance

Lack of desire to pursue homework

Eye that turns inwards or outwards

Why Should Parents Be Concerned?

Streff syndrome has been associated with stress. The fact that your child is under stress is quite
concerning. Perhaps your child is dealing with too many activities after school which drains their
energy? Stress can also be a red flag for anxiety or bullying.

There’s a kind of stress that is normal and adaptive, then there’s a kind of stress that’s pathological and maladaptive. While everyone experiences stress, too much stress can negatively affect your child in several ways, not just in their vision, and steps have to be taken to address this.

Streff syndrome affects your child’s performance at school when they experience sudden reduction in attention and focus during academic tasks. They may begin to struggle at school and there may be an increase in the amount of mistakes made on homework.

Visually, your child may complain of blurred vision at near and in the distance, sensitivity to light, double vision, or increased clumsiness due to objects not being noticed in your child’s side vision.

How Can We Help?

Streff Syndrome

Provide Accurate Diagnosis

We’ll perform a thorough binocular vision examination to identify that the symptoms are truly psychogenic and not from significant refractive error or pathology. We will discuss with you the etiology, prevalence, signs and symptoms and treatment of Streff syndrome.

Streff Syndrome

Help ID the Source of Stress

We’ll help you identify the main cause of your child’s stress. It may be visual stress, emotional stress, the pressure of schooling, physical or physiological trauma. Once we’ve established the underlying cause of their stress, we’ll help work out a solution or, if needed, refer you to an allied health professional.

Streff Syndrome

Alleviate and Manage the Symptoms

As Streff syndrome is self-limiting and resolves when the stress is reduced, there is no quick cure to rid children of the visual problems. While we wait for spontaneous recovery, we will present management options available to help alleviate the symptoms in the short term.

Streff Syndrome

Provide Tested Solutions

These management options include: low plus eyewear in the form of reading glasses or multifocals, syntonic light therapy or vision therapy to help increase peripheral awareness in cases of children with reduced fields of vision and vision therapy to help increase focusing and eye movement skills.

Your Child’s Sight is Precious

Good vision is vital for your child’s development, both academically and in their everyday life. Don’t wait for the signs to show up – let our behavioural optometrists help you give your child the best chance at clear, efficient vision.

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