[Measuring quality of life]

The four broad domains of quality of life are the physical status and functional abilities, the psychological status and well-being, the social interactions and the economic status and factors. Health profiles attempt to measure all important aspects of Quality of Life (QOL). They offer a number of advantages and they also have some limitations. A number of QOL indexes have been recently developed to measure emotional and social functions, well-being as well as overall health status. Some scales used to evaluate QOL are function-specific as social interactions scales or daily living scales; others are disease-specific. For the severely mentally ill patients the most comprehensive and psychometrically best characterized scales have been recently reviewed. The Lehman's Structured Quality of Life interview for example based on comprehensive quality of life models, includes both subjective and objective QOL indicators and should be extensively used in french clinical studies.