Søren Ventegodt

Quality of life theory I. The IQOL theory: an integrative theory of the global quality of life concept.

Quality of life (QOL) means a good life and we believe that a good life is the same as living a life with a high quality. This paper presents the theoretical and philosophical framework of the Danish Quality of Life Survey, and of the SEQOL, QOL5, and QOL1 questionnaires.The notion of a good life can be observed from subjective to the objective, where this spectrum incorporates a number of existing quality of life theories. We call this spectrum the integrative quality-of-life (IQOL) theory and discuss the following aspects in this paper: well being, satisfaction with life, happiness, meaning in life, the biological information system (“balance”), realizing life potential, fulfillment of needs, and objective factors.The philosophy of life outlined in this paper tries to measure the global quality of life with questions derived from the integrative theory of the quality of life. The IQOL theory is an overall theory or meta-theory encompassing eight more factual theories in a subjective-existential-objective spectrum. Other philosophies of life can stress other aspects of life, but by this notion of introducing such an existential depth into the health and social sciences, we believe to have taken a necessary step towards a new humility and respect for the richness and complexity of life.

The life mission theory: a theory for a consciousness-based medicine.

Genetic factors, external stress and the human factor are influential to the health and well-being of every person. Several studies have shown that the human being have many internal powers that can promote health and increase quality of life. A theory on the human meaning of life is put forward and how it relates to health, disease and quality of life in the context of holistic medicine.

Sense of Coherence and Physical Health. A Review of Previous Findings

The aim of this paper is to systematically review the available scientific publications published concerning the association between the sense of coherence (SOC), designed by Aaron Antonovsky (1923-1994), measured with the scales SOC-29 or SOC-13, and different aspects of health. The study is descriptive and integrates more than 50 scientific publications. The results are divided into the categories: Physical health; biological measures; psychological measures; health measures incorporating psychological aspects; stress; and behavioural aspects. The conclusion from this review is that SOC is highly associated with psychological aspects, including stress and behavioural aspects when SOC is operationalized with the prevailing scales. However, we were unable to show a strong association between SOC and physical health that Antonovsky had predicted. Therefore, we conclude that the SOC scale can only serve as a predictor for health that is measured by incorporating psychological aspects, while it is not capable of explaining physical health that is measured only by means of physical terms.

Holistic Medicine III: The Holistic Process Theory of Healing

It is possible to understand the process of healing from a holistic perspective. According to the life mission theory, we can stretch our existence and lower our quality of life when we are in crises, to survive and adapt, and we can relax to increase our quality of life when we later have resources for healing. The holistic process theory explains how this healing comes about: Healing happens in a state of consciousness exactly opposite to the state of crises. The patient enters the “holistic state of healing” when the (1) patient and (2) the physician have a perspective in accordance with life, (3) a safe environment, (4) personal resources, (5) the patient has the will to live, (6) the patient and (7) the physician have the intention of healing, (8) the trust of the patient in the physician, and (9) sufficient holding. The holding must be fivefold, giving the patient (1) acknowledgment, (2) awareness, (3) respect, (4) care, and (5) acceptance. The holistic process has three obligatory steps: (1) to feel, (2) to understand, and (3) to let go of negative decisions. This paper presents a theory for the holistic process of healing, and lists the necessities for holistic therapy restoring the quality of life, health, and ability to function of the patient.

Quality of life as medicine: a pilot study of patients with chronic illness and pain.

An intensive 5-day quality-of-life (QoL) session was constructed based on a psychosomatic model. The session was comprised of teaching on philosophy of life, psychotherapy, and body therapy. The three elements were put together in such a way that they mutually supported each other. The synergy attained was considerable. The pilot study demonstrated that in the course of only 1 week, patients had time to revise essential life-denying views and to integrate important, unfinished life events involving negative feelings. Consequently, the patients became more present in the body’s blocked-off areas and subjectively healthier. Nineteen persons with chronic illness and pain (fibromyalgia, chronic tiredness, whiplash, mild depression, and problems involving pain in arms and legs including osteoarthritis), and unemployed for 5–7 years attended the course. In the week before and after the 5-day course, the participants completed the validated SEQOL (Self-Evaluation of Quality of Life Questionnaire) including questions on self-evaluated health and the unvalidated “Self-Evaluation of Working-Life Quality Questionnaire” (SEQWL). This pilot study was without a control group or clinical control. As far as diagnoses were concerned, the group was inhomogeneous. Common for the group was a low QoL, poor quality of working life QWL, and numerous health problems. The study showed an 11.2% improvement in QoL (p < 0.05), a 6.3% improvement in QWL (p < 0.05), and a 12.0% improvement in self-perceived physical health (p = 0.08). There was a 17.3% improvement in self-perceived psychological health (p < 0.05) and satisfaction with health in general improved by 21.4% (p < 0.05). Symptoms like pain were almost halved and several of the participants were free of pain for the first time in years. In conclusion it seemed that the combination of training in philosophy of life, psychotherapy, and body therapy can give patients a large, fast, and efficient improvement in QoL, QWL, and health. It is not known if these changes will be permanent and if all kinds of patients with different health problems will gain from this cure. Further research should be conducted.

The Life Mission Theory IV. Theory on Child Development

We can identify five important needs that children have: the need for acknowledgment, acceptance, awareness or attention, respect, and care. If these needs are not met, children will modify themselves by denying central parts of their nature in order to adjust to their parents and the situation at large. When a child denies his or her talents, powers, and gender or aspects thereof, he or she loses quality of life, the ability to function, and physical or mental health. The loss of ability takes the form of diminished social ability, psychosexual potency, joy, energy, and fantasy while playing, as well as diminished ability to concentrate, focus, and learn. Many modifications result in a child with severely damaged self-confidence, self-worth, and poor performance. A child more or less deprived of self-worth cannot enjoy, give, or receive. A child deprived of emotions turns cold, rational, asocial, socially stiff, uncomfortable, and in the extreme case... intentionally “evil”. When a child denies his or her own sex, it becomes invisible, uninteresting, and vague or becomes like the opposite sex in behavior and appearance. The general holistic solution to the vast diversity of symptoms in children with low quality of life is to improve the situation for the child and give the child the holding and support he or she needs. It is very important to realize that a negative belief often has survival value to the child as it helps the child to avoid taking responsibility for problems, which really belong to the parents or other adults. Children have a fine capability for spontaneous healing, and seem to enter this process more easily than adults, given sufficient holding. The symptoms of children with poor thriving ability are often difficult to understand, as they are caused by a complex combination of self-modification in five existential dimensions. This often leads to complex medical diagnosis, giving the idea that the child is sick and without therapeutic reach, while sufficient holding could solve the problem. If holding and support of the child is not enough, the situation must be carefully analyzed to find other possible causes of poor quality of life, health, and functional ability. Education of the parent in holding is often mandatory. Most children with bad thriving ability can thus be helped by simple means.

The Life Mission Theory II. The Structure of the Life Purpose and the Ego

Pursuing your life mission is often very difficult, and many frustrations are experienced along the way. Major failures to bring out our potential can cause us considerable emotional pain. When this pain is unbearable, we are induced to shift from one intention and talent to another that better allows us to adapt and survive. Thus, we become set on a course that brings out a secondary or tertiary talent instead of the primary talent. This talent displacement may be expressed as a loss of our true nature or true self. The new purpose in life now functions as the core of a new personality: the ego. The ego has a structure similar to that of the true self. It is anchored in a talent and it draws on subtalents. But the person who is centered in his or her ego is not as powerful or talented as the person he or she originally was, living the primary purpose of life. This is because the original personality (the true self or “higher self”) is still there, active and alive, behind the ego. Symptoms, disorders, and diseases may be explained by the loss of energy, joy in life, and intuitive competence because of inner conflicts, which may be alleviated or cured in the salutogenetic process of Antonovsky that helps patients find their sense of coherence or their primary purpose in life. Many cases of reduced ability to function, physically as well as psychologically, socially or sexually, can also be explained and alleviated in this way. When a person discovers his true talent and begins to use it with dedication, privately as well as professionally, his life will flourish and he may overcome even serious disease and great adversity in life. The salutogenetic process can also be called personal development or “quality of life as medicine”. It is important to note that the plan for personal development laid out by this theory is a plan not for the elimination of the ego, but for its cultivation. An existentially sound person still has a mental ego of course, but it is centered on the optimal verbal expression of the life mission. Such an ego is not in conflict with ones true self, but supports the life and wholeness of the person, although in an invisible and seamless way. The more developed the person, the more talents are taken into use. So although the core of existence remains the same throughout life, the healthy person continues to grow. As the number of talents we can call on is unlimited, the journey ends only at death. Understanding the concept of the ego, it is very easy for the physician to motivate the patient to go through a lot of difficulties in order to grow and develop, and when the patient fully understands the concept of the ego and the true self (higher self), the patient gets a strong feeling of direction in personal development, and a motivation to fight the internal obstacles for quality of life, health, and the ability to function.

Quality of life theory II. Quality of life as the realization of life potential: a biological theory of human being.

This review presents one of the eight theories of the quality of life (QOL) used for making the SEQOL (self-evaluation of quality of life) questionnaire or the quality of life as realizing life potential. This theory is strongly inspired by Maslow and the review furthermore serves as an example on how to fulfill the demand for an overall theory of life (or philosophy of life), which we believe is necessary for global and generic quality-of-life research.Whereas traditional medical science has often been inspired by mechanical models in its attempts to understand human beings, this theory takes an explicitly biological starting point. The purpose is to take a close view of life as a unique entity, which mechanical models are unable to do. This means that things considered to be beyond the individuals purely biological nature, notably the quality of life, meaning in life, and aspirations in life, are included under this wider, biological treatise. Our interpretation of the nature of all living matter is intended as an alternative to medical mechanism, which dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. New ideas such as the notions of the human being as nestled in an evolutionary and ecological context, the spontaneous tendency of self-organizing systems for realization and concord, and the central role of consciousness in interpreting, planning, and expressing human reality are unavoidable today in attempts to scientifically understand all living matter, including human life.

Holistic Medicine: Scientific Challenges

The field of holistic medicine is in need of a scientific approach. We need holistic medicine — and we even need it to be spiritual to include the depths of human existence — but we need it to be a little less “cosmic” in order to encompass the whole human being. Many important research questions and challenges, empirical as well as theoretical, demand the attention from medical researchers. Like a number of other practitioners and researchers, our group at the Quality of Life Research Center in Denmark together with groups in Norway and Israel are trying to tackle the research challenge by using conceptual frameworks of quality of life. We have suggested that quality of life represents a third influence on health beyond the genetic and traumatic factors so far emphasized by mainstream medicine. In our clinical and research efforts, we attempt to specify what a clinician may do to help patients help themselves, by mobilizing the vast resources hidden in their subjective worlds and existence, in their hopes and dreams, and their will to live. The field of holistic medicine must be upgraded to fully integrate human consciousness, scientifically as well as philosophically. We therefore present a number of important research questions for a consciousness-based holistic medicine. New directions in healthcare are called for and we need a new vision of the future of the healthcare sector in the industrialized countries. Every person seems to have immense potentials for self-healing that we scarcely know how to mobilize. A new holistic medicine must find ways to tackle this key challenge. A healthcare system that could do that successfully would bring quality of life, health, and new ability of functioning to many people.

The Square Curve Paradigm for Research in Alternative, Complementary, and Holistic Medicine: A Cost-Effective, Easy, and Scientifically Valid Design for Evidence-Based Medicine and Quality Improvement

In this paper we present a new research paradigm for alternative, complementary, and holistic medicine — a low-cost, effective, and scientifically valid design for evidence-based medicine. Our aim is to find the simplest, cheapest, and most practical way to collect data of sufficient quality and validity to determine: (1) which kinds of treatment give a clinically relevant improvement to quality of life, health, and/or functionality; (2) which groups of patients can be aided by alternative, complementary, or holistic medicine; and (3) which therapists have the competence to achieve the clinically relevant improvements. Our solution to the problem is that a positive change in quality of life must be immediate to be taken as caused by an intervention. We define “immediate” as within 1 month of the intervention. If we can demonstrate a positive result with a group of chronic patients (20 or more patients who have had their disease or state of suffering for 1 year or more), who can be significantly helped within 1 month, and the situation is still improved 1 year after, we find it scientifically evidenced that this cure or intervention has helped the patients. We call this characteristic curve a “square curve”. If a global, generic, quality-of-life questionnaire like QOL5 or, even better, a QOL-Health-Ability questionnaire (a quality-of-life questionnaire combined with a self-evaluated health and ability to function questionnaire) is administered to the patients before and after the intervention, it is possible to document the effect of an intervention to a cost of only a few thousand Euros/USD. A general acceptance of this new research design will solve the problem that there is not enough money in alternative, complementary, and holistic medicine to pay the normal cost of a biomedical Cochrane study. As financial problems must not hinder the vital research in nonbiomedical medicine, we ask the scientific community to accept this new research standard.