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Date Posted: 13:17:36 02/16/02 Sat
Author: mrg
Subject: QUALITY of LIFE and PEOPLE with DISABILITIES

Studies show people with disabilities believe they have a good quality of life, even though medical professionals think they have a poor quality of life. What are the implications of this for people with disabilities seeking medical treatment?

Newly injured people with disabilities are vulnerable in an environment that is hostile to living with a significant disability. People with disabilities, isolated and with no understanding of disability, often are depressed and tend toward suicide. As a reason for assisted suicide, many people cite disabled peoples' "quality of life": Disabled people have no quality of life, they say.

86% of spinal cord injured high-level quadriplegics rated their quality of life as average or better than average. Only 17% of their emergency-room doctors, nurses, and technicians thought they would have an average or better quality of life if they acquired quadriplegia). No differences were found between 190 physically disabled persons and 195 "able bodied" persons on ratings of life satisfaction, frustration with life or mood.

Interviews and tests administered to 133 persons with severe mobility disabilities revealed no differences between them and the nondisabled norm on psychosocial measures. In another study, no significant difference was found between persons with severe disabilities (requiring wheelchair use and daily personal assistance) and persons with no disabilities on quality of life measures.

Spinal cord injured rehabilitation patients were similar to the general population on self-ratings of depression, yet hospital staff consistently overestimated the patients1 level of depression.

From The Center for An Accessible Society

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