Assessment of quality of life in people with aphasia

The quality of life has been at the center of attention of numerous researchers and scientists for years. WHO defines it as “an individual's perception of position in life within the context of culture and set of values they live in, and relating to their goals, expectations, standards, and worries.” Aphasia is an acquired language impairment that results from damage to specific brain regions, affecting one or more aspects of language, typically caused by stroke. Aphasia undoubtedly affects the quality of one’s life, but it yet remains unknown in which aspects and how to measure it. The main issue of measuring the quality of life in people with aphasia is that self-assessment often requires understanding and production of language and process of information recall. On the other hand, trying to overcome these obstacles by using significant others in the assessment of quality of life of people with aphasia is problematic. That is because quality of life represents the subjective construct interpreted differently by every individual. Besides mentioned problems, it is unknown how aware are the clinicians of the necessity to assess the quality of life in planning therapy and its outcomes for people with aphasia. Even the ones willing to implement quality of life assessment in their clinical work feel they lack practice, knowledge, resources, and/or time to do so. However, despite the obstacles, scientists and clinicians should have in mind that assessment of quality of life enables the preparation of efficient therapy and the estimation of its effectiveness. Due to the speech and language difficulties commonly found in people with aphasia, big importance lies within the speech therapists, professionals who can adjust the particles in assessment of quality of life and so ease the stressful situation. All of the above implies the necessity of education of speech therapists in this field.