quality of life

(noun)

The general well-being of individuals and societies, including not only wealth and employment, but also the built environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, and social belonging.

Related Terms

Examples of quality of life in the following topics:

  • Attitude and Health

    • Managing health requires understanding the influence of psychological factors (such as attitude and mood) and overall quality of life.
    • In this section, we will explore the influence of psychological factors and quality of life.
    • Quality of life is recognized as an increasingly important healthcare topic.
    • In general, quality of life is a person's assessment of their well-being, or lack thereof.
    • Although causality cannot always be determined, poor quality of life is often correlated with poor health, and high quality of life is often correlated with better health.

  • Specific Effects of Stress: Cancer

    • When people feel that they are unable to manage or control life changes that are caused by cancer, they are said to be in distress.
    • Distress has become increasingly recognized as a factor that can reduce the quality of life of cancer patients, and some evidence indicates that extreme distress is associated with poorer clinical outcomes.
    • Those who attempt to manage their stress with risky behaviors (such as smoking or drinking alcohol), or who become more sedentary, may have a poorer quality of life during and/or after cancer treatment.
    • Metastasis refers to the transference of a bodily function or disease to another part of the body, specifically the development of a secondary area of disease remote from the original site.
    • Both of these typically occur with aggressive or untreated cancers.

  • Research Methods for Evaluating Treatment Efficacy

    • Researchers who assess therapy are interested in areas such as whether or not counseling is effective, under what conditions it is effective, and what outcomes are considered effective—such as symptom reduction, behavior change, or quality-of-life improvement.
    • Each type of data provides different forms of information, together providing a fuller evaluation of the therapy.
    • One way of gathering quantitative data is through the use of inventories.
    • For example, the Outcome Questionnaire-45 is a 45-item self-report measure of psychological distress; the Beck Depression Inventory specifically measures depression; and the Quality of Life Inventory is a 17-item self-report measure of life satisfaction.
    • The differences in scores can then be examined to determine if the quality of life has improved, if the distressing symptoms have decreased, and other factors that indicate the effectiveness of the therapeutic approach.

  • Neurocognitive Disorders

    • Alzheimer's disease accounts for 60% to 70% of cases of dementia.
    • Although the speed of progression can vary, the average life expectancy following diagnosis is three to nine years.
    • There is some evidence that speech or mobility problems can improve with rehabilitation, although studies are scarce and of low quality.
    • Regular physical exercise with or without physiotherapy can be beneficial to maintain and improve mobility, flexibility, strength, gait speed, and quality of life.
    • However, when an exercise program is performed under the supervision of a physiotherapist, there are more improvements in motor symptoms, mental and emotional functions, daily living activities, and quality of life compared to a self-supervised exercise program at home.

  • Intellectual Disabilities

    • This spectrum of disorders (FASD) is a group of conditions that can occur in a person whose mother ingested alcohol during pregnancy.
    • Education and proper care have been shown to improve quality of life for individuals with Down Syndrome.
    • Individuals living with intellectual disabilities face both personal and external challenges in life.
    • This has improved over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but many individuals with disabilities still face being stigmatized in everday life.
    • Down Syndrome is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21.

  • Strategies for Improving Memory Quality and Duration

    • There are many strategies for improving the quality and duration of memories.
    • At the same time, there are many strategies we can use to improve both the quality and duration of our memories.
    • Rote memorization (the simple repetition of the stimuli over and over again without any real cues or understanding) is one of the least effective but most widely used methods of memorization.
    • One important use of environmental structuring is to guard against the type of memory loss associated with late life dementia: helping a patient remember what he has already done.
    • One example of this approach is pill boxes that are labeled with a day of the week on each compartment.

  • Sleep-Wake Disorders

    • Sleep disorders cause sleep disturbances that affect the amount, quality, or timing of sleep or that induce abnormal events during sleep.
    • Sleep-wake disorders cause a number of sleep disturbances that affect the amount, quality, or timing of sleep or that induce abnormal events during sleep.
    • The person experiences dissatisfaction with sleep quantity or quality as a result of difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep.
    • There is a very low level of public awareness of this disorder, which often results in stigmatization of those who suffer from it.
    • The nightmares, which often portray the individual in a situation that jeopardizes their life or personal safety, usually occur during the second half of the sleeping process, called the REM stage.

  • Goals of Psychology

    • The word psychology comes from two specific Greek words—psyche, which means "soul" or "life", and logia, which means "the study of."
    • Most developmental psychologists focus on a particular stage of life, such as infancy or the elderly.
    • The humanistic movement emphasizes a person's positive qualities, the capacity for personal growth, and the freedom to choose any destiny.
    • Psychology attempts to study various processes in human life which combine to create the human experience.
    • Define the overarching goal of psychology, and discuss the various goals of the different subfields of psychology.

  • Conscious vs. Unconscious Emotion

    • Lazarus stressed that the quality and intensity of emotions are controlled through cognitive processes.
    • It is primarily responsible for processing our emotional life, and assists in the formation of memories.
    • The low road involves a direct emotional pathway to the amygdala designed to protect individuals from life-threatening danger.
    • A combination of brain structures which are primarily responsible for our emotional life, and involved with forming memories.
    • Explain the role of cognition in the processing and experiencing of emotions and their influence on behavior

  • Cultural and Societal Influences on Adolescent Development

    • The influence of parental and peer relationships, as well as the broader culture, shapes many aspects of adolescent development.
    • Although conflicts between children and parents increase during adolescence, they are often related to relatively minor issues; regarding more important life issues, many adolescents will still share the same attitudes and values as their parents.
    • As children begin to create bonds with various people, they start to form friendships; high quality friendships may enhance a child's development regardless of the particular characteristics of those friends.
    • Culture is learned and socially shared, and it affects all aspects of an individual's life.
    • Culture is learned and socially shared, and it affects all aspects of an individual's life.