A socioeconomic consideration exists as well in the context of decisions regarding strabismus treatment, including efforts to re-establish binocular vision and the possibility of stereopsis recovery.One study has shown that strabismic children commonly exhibit behaviors marked by higher degrees of inhibition, anxiety, and emotional distress, often leading to outright emotional disorders. These disorders are often related to a negative perception of the child by peers. This is due not only to an altered aesthetic appearance, but also because of the inherent symbolic nature of the eye and gaze, and the vitally important role they play in an individuals life as social components. For some, these issues improved dramatically following strabismus surgery. Notably, strabismus interferes with normal eye contact, often causing embarrassment, anger, and feelings of awkwardness, thereby affecting social communication in a fundamental way, with a possible negative effect on self esteem.Children with strabismus, particularly those with exotropia, an outward turn, may be more likely to develop a mental health disorder than normal-sighted children.
Strabismus is usually treated with a combination of eyeglasses, vision therapy, and surgery, depending on the underlying reason for the misalignment. As with other binocular vision disorders, the primary goal is comfortable, single, clear, normal binocular vision at all distances and directions of gaze.Whereas amblyopia (lazy eye), if minor and detected early, can often be corrected with use of an eye patch on the dominant eye or vision therapy, the use of eye patches is unlikely to change the angle of strabismus. Glasses
In cases of accommodative esotropia, the eyes turn inward due to the effort of focusing far-sighted eyes, and the treatment of this type of strabismus necessarily involves refractive correction, which is usually done via corrective glasses or contact lenses, and in these cases surgical alignment is considered only if such correction does not resolve the eye turn. In case of strong anisometropia, contact lenses may be preferable to spectacles because they avoid the problem of visual disparities due to size differences (aniseikonia) which is otherwise caused by spectacles in which the refractive power is very different for the two eyes. In a few cases of strabismic children with anisometropic amblyopia, a balancing of the refractive error eyes via refractive surgery has been performed before strabismus surgery was undertaken.Early treatment of strabismus when the person is a baby may reduce the chance of developing amblyopia and depth perception problems. However, a review of randomized controlled trials concluded that the use of corrective glasses to prevent strabismus is not supported by existing research.