The three treatment alternatives available to the behavioral optometrist are compensatory lenses, treatment lenses, and vision therapy. Compensatory Lenses Behavioral optometrists take a series of measurements that reveal the current refractive status of the patient. Some patients simply want to see clearly, despite the information that prescriptions provided merely to help the person see most clearly generally decrease overall visual efficiency and promote future deterioration of both the visual process and the refractive condition. These patients are provided with compensatory lenses only. The lens treatment alternative is derived from the understanding of the development of progressive refractive conditions and the fact that sustained near-point activity is stressful to all humans.
Lenses are the most powerful tool available to alter human behavior.
Lenses provide the opportunity for people to immediately alter their perception of the world around them and immediately change how they function in their environment. Behavioral optometric tests provide the information necessary for creating these special lenses. Patients are provided with these lenses to alter their behavior and allow them to process more information more efficiently, with less stress, and in a shorter period of time and to come away from that stressful act less altered by it. The lens treatment alternative provides the patient with a tool to help them perform their visual tasks. To demonstrate how this type of lens treatment works, consider the following analogy.