The experience of a disease, a chronic disease in particular, can frequently involve an enormous sense of discomfort and, as a consequence, adopting an attitude that one’s quality of life has significantly decreased. The sense of the quality of life is a subjective category, conditioned by many factors such as e.g. personality traits or the subject's hierarchy of values. People usually assess the value of their lives by comparing the state in which they currently find themselves to the earlier state and by determining the possibilities of further functioning of their bodies. The assessment of one’s health status can be a result of strong emotions influencing the the way the situation is perceived and the desires or behaviour of the individual, who – in extreme situations – can assume that life of a certain quality (especially when there are no prospects of a significant improvement) no longer holds any value for them. In such circumstances the person may refuse to continue the therapy or even suffer from self-destructive thoughts, creating a very difficult situation for the people around, who sometimes perceive the sick person’s quality of life in a radically different way and face the question of how they should react to the attitude shown by the sick towards the problems he or she has to tackle.

Key words: disease, quality of life, health, suffering.