Lesão Encefálica Adquirida: impacto na atividade laboral de sujeitos em idade produtiva e de seus familiares

Quality of life of aphasia subjects participating in an interdisciplinary group

PURPOSE

To analyze the Quality of Life of subjects with aphasia participating in an Interdisciplinary Living Group.

METHODS

cross-sectional and quantitative study. Convenience sample submitted to two questionnaires: a semi-structured one, developed exclusively for the characterization of the subjects and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale - Bref (WHOQOL-Bref) to identify their Quality of Life (QOL). Data analysis was descriptive.

RESULTS

Eight subjects were interviewed, aged between 35 and 78 years and schooling between Incomplete Elementary School and Incomplete Higher Education. The predominant occupation was that of a clerk and the income varied between one and four minimum wages. The time of brain injury was from three to 10 years, caused predominantly by Stroke caused by Systemic Arterial Hypertension. As for WHOQOL, there was an important variation between the subjects in the four domains (physical, psychological, social and environmental). However, most scored above 70 points. For all subjects, the Living Group was identified as a space for the production of life and health, motivating them to seek other services.

CONCLUSION

The subjects were adults and elderly people belonging to the lower-middle class; presented chronic health conditions, impaired verbal expression and long monitoring time to their health needs. The WHOQOL-Bref revealed that five subjects perceived their favorable living/health conditions, however, they highlighted reduced social contact. The Living Group became an important space for improving QOL.

Family quality of life: an integrative review on the family of people with disabilities

The objective of this integrative revision is to understand the Brazilian scientific production of the thematic focus on the family quality of life (FQoL) of people with disabilities, as well as the participating population, referential theory, and instruments used in the studies. The data survey was done in the BVS, Scielo, and PubMed databases, and in the Capes' Periodic portal, whose inclusion criteria were articles published from 2007 to 2018, available fully online, in Portuguese or English. These articles portrayed the theme of life quality of families of people with disabilities and articles from research done in Brazilian contexts. The results showed that only three of the 19 selected articles to the study analyzed the theme of FQoL directly including the aspects related to the construct. They also pointed out that WHOQOL-Bref was the most used instrument to evaluate the FQoL (n=11), followed by semi structured interviews (n=5) and that only 10,5%, i.e., two articles used the appropriated definition of the FQoL. The research determined that the thematic research is still in the beginning stage in the scientific national production, large use of individual constructs of life quality, and sparse presence of specific measures instruments to measure FQoL.