Quality of life of deaf people's relatives assisted in a rehabilitation center

The aim of this study was to assess the quality of life of deaf people's relatives in a rehabilitation service. This descriptive study was conducted from March to June 2005 and a sample of fifteen parents of deaf people assisted in CEPRE/FCM/UNICAMP was interviewed. It was used a Portuguese version of the generic instrument of quality of life assessment WHOQOL-BREF (World Health Organization Quality of Life), along with an identification questionnaire and socio-demographic data. The SPSS program was used in the statistics analysis, with the scores transformed from zero to 100. The Research Ethics Committee of the School of Medical Sciences of Unicamp approved this investigation. The sample interviewed consisted in a majority of women (93.3%), all homemakers with an average of 44 years old. The evaluation of the different items at WHO-QOL - BREF indicated that the relatives interviewed admitted to have a "good" or a "very good" quality of life. The study showed a better quality of life in the physical (73.8%) and social relationship aspects (72.2%). A lower perception could be seen in the environment domain (51.8%) probably because of their socio-cultural conditions, as well as in the psychological domain (63.3%), which may be related to the fact of living together with a deaf child.