What is well-being and quality of life? Subjective quality of life is about how the individual perceives life. It includes assessments of both life (for example, life satisfaction) and functioning in daily life (for example, perceived coping ability and purpose), as well as positive and negative emotions (such as happiness and sadness). Subjective quality of life can be perceived as positive even during illness and despite health disorders and other types of strain. Objective quality of life is about key aspects of the life situation – such as freedom, security, health, social bonds and self-development.
Status and key trends for the major disease groups A general overview of public health requires knowledge not only of what causes loss of life, but also what causes loss of health through having to live with diseases. Figure 8 on the next page shows the contribution from various diseases and injuries to the total burden of disease, measured in DALYs, in fiveyear age groups up to age 80. Mental disorders and substance use disorders (marked in blue in figure 8) are common afflictions that affect many people even from an early age. With the exception of mortality caused by street drugs, these afflictions contribute primarily to the burden of disease through nonfatal loss of health. From adulthood, an increasing share of the burden of disease comes from musculoskeletal disorders (brown colour in the figure), and these also primarily contribute through non-fatal loss of health. From around age 60, the burden of disease increases as a consequence of COPD (grey), diabetes (light orange), dementia (orange), cancer (black) and cardiovascular disease (red). The burden of disease contributed by these conditions is largely due to the fact that they lead to many lost life years.
Burden of disease Every year, the Global Burden of Disease study (GBD) makes calculations of the burden of disease for 195 countries, including Norway. An important collective metric for the burden of disease in that context is disability-adjusted lifeyears (DALYs), which is the sum of the potential years of life lost due to premature death, and non-fatal loss of health. The latter is calculated by combining the number of cases of a given disease with the severity of that disease. When the calculation is carried out for multiple diseases and for multiple countries over time, for both sexes and all age groups, the burden of disease can be compared.
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