Survey on Psychological Well-Being and Quality of Life in Visually Impaired Individuals: Dancesport vs. Other Sound Input-Based Sports

Giuditta Carretti, Daniela Mirandola, Eleonora Sgambati, Mirko Manetti and Mirca Marini
Additional contact information
Giuditta Carretti: Section of Anatomy and Histology, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy
Daniela Mirandola: Section of Anatomy and Histology, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy
Eleonora Sgambati: Department of Biosciences and Territory, University of Molise, 86090 Pesche, Italy
Mirko Manetti: Section of Anatomy and Histology, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy
Mirca Marini: Section of Anatomy and Histology, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 8, 1-10

Abstract: Sport practice has the widely demonstrated potential of promoting well-being and physical/mental health, especially in disabled individuals. Nowadays, visually impaired people can participate in several sports commonly adapted and played substituting visual input with auditory or tactile ones. By integrating movement and music, dance can simultaneously promote physical and emotional involvement and enhances vicarious sense recruitment. On these premises, we performed a survey to assess the psychological well-being (PWB) and quality of life (QoL) in visually impaired athletes, comparing dancesport vs other sound input-based sports. Twenty-one visually impaired dancers and twenty-seven visually impaired athletes practicing adapted baseball, showdown, blind futsal, or blind tennis completed a structured self-report survey including the Italian version of PWB-18 scale and the Short Form-12 (SF-12) questionnaire. Dancers reported significantly higher scores in PWB-18 autonomy, environmental mastery, and self-acceptance along with a higher PWB total score than the other athlete group. Similarly, the SF-12 questionnaire results demonstrated significantly higher scores in both physical and mental QoL of visually impaired dancers compared with other athletes. In conclusion, our findings suggest that, given its peculiarities, the practice of dancesport may have a stronger positive impact on PWB and QoL of visually impaired individuals than other sound input-based sports.

Keywords: visual disability; dancesport; sound input-based sport; quality of life; psychological well-being; survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/8/4438/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/8/4438/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:8:p:4438-:d:788663

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().