Posted on October 31, 2001 at 10:07 a.m.
BIRMINGHAM, AL — The impact chronic illnesses such as asthma, cancer, cystic fibrosis, diabetes and their treatments can have on a child’s quality of life is the subject of a new book edited by University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) psychologist Jan Wallander, Ph.D, and Hans Koot at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Quality of Life in Child and Adolescent Illness: Concepts, Methods and Findings, (2001, Brunner-Routledge) takes a comprehensive look at quality of life as it relates to a range of diseases and conditions in children. The book features a collection of essays by psychologists and health care professionals from around the world.
The development of quality of life research comes in an era when major medical advances for treating chronic and severe illnesses have increased patient survival. As a result, families are faced with questions of how to provide the best life for their chronically ill children. Subsequently, more health care professionals are studying the impact that certain diseases have on children’s lives.
“We can easily get lost and just treat the disease, but we should also be concerned with how it effects the patient,” Wallander said. “A chronically ill child’s quality of life involves their self-esteem, how they interact socially with others, and how they manage the physical demands of daily life. How they deal with an illness has to do with not only the disease, but with their coping resources and family and peer support.”
The book gives readers an overview of different approaches to assessing quality of life and the current efforts and methods for developing appropriate quality of life measures. Objective assessments can include looking at the number of days a child is ill or how often the child gets to socialize with others his own age. A more subjective approach can include determining a child’s level of satisfaction with life despite the illness or condition, Wallander said.
“We hope that more people dealing directly with children, such as psychologists, pediatricians, pediatric nurses, child psychiatrists, public health professional and researchers, will begin to think in broader terms,” Wallander said, “and come to use quality of life as the ultimate outcome of treatments and healthcare policy.”