Quality of life

A total concept

The analyzes of Quality of life (QV) started to be developed in the years 1970, in order to describe and measure the impact of various states on the daily life of the people, by taking of account the emotional aspect and the social functions as much as the purely physical conditions. From this total point of view, the approaches economic, psychosocial and biomedical of quality of life coexist.

In the field of health

Definition

The QV is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 1994) as “ the perception which an individual of its place in the existence has, in the context of the culture and the system of values in which he lives, in relation to its objectives, its waitings, its standards and its concerns. It is about a broad conceptual field, including in manner complexes the physical health of the person, her psychological state, its level of independence, its social relations, its beliefs personal and its relationship to specificities of its environment ”.

The globality of the approach suggested is a brake with the development of a consensual definition. The QV is thus synonymous with wellbeing, perceptuelle health and satisfaction of life, according to the approach which is interested in it. The blur which surrounds this concept is systematically underlined by the authors who are interested there.

The literature agrees all the same to regard quality of life as a multidimensional concept (Leplège, 2001; Rejesky and Mihalko, 2001) which structure generally around four dimensions:

The evaluation of quality of life cannot be reduced with that of the Santé. Health is not enough to explain the differences in level to quality of life. Certain subjects whose functional statute and of health is regarded as deplorable have a high quality of life, or conversely (Métanalyse de Rejesky and Mihalko, 2001).

The point of view of the patient, that of the health professional and that of the company offer different glances on quality of life. The concerns of medical staffs and those of the patients necessarily do not agree (Leplège, 2001).

The measurement of quality of life in the field of health is interested to give an account of the point of view of interested themselves: it is a subjective measurement.

Psychological approach

Wellbeing

See also: Wellbeing

It relates to the judgment which a subject carries on its life and its psychic balance.

Medical approach

Quality of life related to health

Its goal is to constitute a subjective indicator of health,

Measure

There exists in this approach two big classes of tests of measurement of quality of life:

  • the specific instruments are centered on a pathology or a particular public
  • the generic instruments is used in the case of varied pathologies and evaluates in a rather total way the health condition, psychological operation and the social environment of the subject.

Quotations of the index type or profile respectively give an account of a comprehensive view or analytical of quality of life. The indices produce a total score, while the profiles provide a score for each explored dimension of quality of life, without combining them in a single score.

There exist 7 scales validated in French among the generic indicators of quality of life:

  • ISPN or NHP: indicator of perceptuelle health of Nottingham or Nottingham Health Porfil
  • QWB: quality off well being
  • SIP: sikness impact profile
  • Profile of health of Duke
  • EuroQol
  • PQVS
  • SF-36

In the policy fields, economic and social

Definition

In this approach, the quality of life is a concept that it is possible to try to define:

  • To have an occupation which gets a sufficient financial autonomy without being alienating;

  • To live in an environment which supports the harmonious development of its personality.

This concept includes/understands others of them such as:

QV and political context

The measurement of the wellbeing relates to at the same time the sectors of the environmental economy and the various movements of Social justice. It is a concept associated with the green Partis in certain countries. He seeks to establish a measurement of the benefit and losses of wellbeing relating to the environmental and social aspects.

With the the United States, these measurements are often associated with the proposal of amendment of the seventh generation (amendment with the American constitution) and with Canada with the Act of Measurement of the Wellbeing presented by Mike Nickerson of the Green Party of Ontario and by Joe Jordan, a deputy of the Liberal party of Canada of Leeds-Grenville, (Ontario). These acts refer explicitly to a Standard seventh generation to judge the government action with large scales.

Though no law forcing to respect a measurement of the wellbeing was still adopted, a growing popular movement pushes in their favor, in particular in the context of ALENA. That could call in question certain basic assumptions concerning the Inflation and the money Supply.

Preliminary negotiations on the agreement of ALENA to adopt the US dollar as common currency (as well with the Canada as with the Mexico) were singularly complicated by proposals to be based - a priori - on the need to measure the wellbeing (a subject which remains very new). The actions in this direction of the Canadian Labor Congress, of the Left green American, the green Left Ontario or the green Parti Canada are probably justified mainly by the wish to slow down or prevent the monetary union. Nevertheless, there are a broad agreement among the green economists on the need for a common standard of measurement of the wellbeing and, perhaps, Démocracie biorégionale, with an aim of ensuring the Biosécurité in preliminary any monetary union.

See too

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