Lesson of the week: Fear of the dark in children: is stationary night blindness the cause?

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7382.211

BMJ 2003;326:211-212 ( 25 January )

Clinical review

Lesson of the week

Fear of the dark in children: is stationary night blindness the cause?

Fear of the dark in children may have a pathological basis

Sikander S Sidiki, specialist registrar ^a, Ruth Hamilton, senior medical physicist ^b, Gordon N Dutton, consultant ophthalmologist ^c.

^a Tennent Institute of Ophthalmology, Gartnavel General Hospital, Glasgow G12 0YN, ^b Department of Clinical Physics, Yorkhill NHS Trust, Glasgow G3 8SJ, ^c Ophthalmology Department

Correspondence to: Ruth Hamilton
r.hamilton@clinmed.gla.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Fear of the dark is a common complaint of pre-teenage children. ¹ ² It should not be confused with night terrors or panics,in which a child becomes acutely agitated and terror-struck atnight, appearing to be awake while in fact asleep and unable tobe woken. ³ ⁴ In contrast, fear of the dark can be experiencedby the conscious child in dimly lit or dark conditions. When suchfear is excessive it is often attributed to attention seekingbehaviour or assumed to be an irrational fear that will abatewithtime.

Most people can see a little in very dim lighting conditions after a short period of adaptation. However, a child with novisual problem obvious to the parents and who can see normallyin well lit conditions can present as being unable to see at allin the dark even after a period for adaptation. In a child whocannot yet . . . [Full text of this article]