Compliance of attitudes about the life quality in healthy and unhealthy schoolchildren and their parents/companions

Introduction: Measuring of health and life quality in children is complex and followed by a number of methodological problems, and the specificities of childhood represent an aggravating circumstance. Earlier researches have suggested that the life quality of patients is not only influenced by physical characteristics, but also by other dimensions - social, psychological and cognitive. Long-term treatments involve a higher degree of dependence on parents and therefore less independence, to which adolescents generally aspire, and the gap between the dependence and independence often leads to conflicts with parents. From the above mentioned it follows that in assessing the life quality of children, the most appropriate approach is to use a double approach - a child's attitude complemented with the parents' attitude. Aim: To examine the compliance of attitudes about the life quality in healthy and unhealthy schoolchildren and their parents/companions. Material and method: The study was conducted on a sample of 170 schoolchildren aging 8-18 and their parents (85 children treated at the Department of Pediatric Orthopedics and Traumatology in IOHB Banjica and 85 healthy children of the Primary School 'Vuk Karadzic' and the Third Grammar School, Belgrade). The questions about the life quality included three dimensions: the physical aspect, the social aspect and the psychological and emotional aspects of life. RESULTS: By analyzing the responses of the parents and unhealthy children obtained through the questionnaire, we found that there was an accordance between the children's and their parents' responses, except in the area of emotional and psychological dimensions of the lives of the unhealthy children, where there was the highest level of discrepancy in the responses. Conclusion: The analysis of the life quality of children and their parents should be a generally accepted algorithm in the evaluation of the effects of the applied treatment.