QUALITY-OF-LIFE IN CHILDREN WITH CHRONIC ILLNESS - LITERATURE-REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

Most studies of the literature concerning the quality of life of child ren with chronic illness have been conducted in the somatic field, usi ng objective criteria. However the concept of quality of life has evol ved: while the first studies took into consideration the effects of so matic diseases on children or on their families, the recent studies te nd to focus on the coping strategies developped by the families. The a uthor.5 emphazise two main points concerning the evaluation and the co ncept of quality of life: 1) the measures of the quality of life shoul d be ''dynamic''. i.e. they should deal with the developmental changes of the child: 2) due to the difficulty to clearly define the concept and to the variability of the available informations, a ''convergence '' notion should be preferably used: i.e. information should be collec ted from several sources (professionnals. families and children) and s hould concern most domains of the child's life: school, health, games, relationnal life.