Quality of life among diabetic and asthmatic patients: A comparative study.

The aim of the present study is to compare the quality of life among diabetic and asthmatic patients. The two most common chronic diseases worldwide are diabetes and asthma. It is a major public health concern in developing countries (Azevedo & Alia, 2008). Asthma and diabetes are chronic conditions and were considered earlier as having a psychosomatic origin. In the past, prominent psychoanalysts such as Menninger (1935) and Dunbar (1936) claimed that diabetes was a part of psychosomatic disease caused by emotional stress. Quality of life is a phrase used to refer to an individual's total well-being The purpose of this study was to see quality of life among diabetes and asthmatics patients. The sample size is 90 in total, where 30 diabetic and 30 asthmatic patients from different medical hospitals of Raipur and Chandigarh and 30 non-patients group has been taken for the study through purposive sampling. The tools used for assessing the variables are Sociodemographic data sheet, WHO Quality of Life - BREF (1996) and General Health Questionnaire- GHQ (Shamsunder et al., 1986). All the groups differ significantly on Quality of life domains i.e. physical health, psychological, social relationship and environmental factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]