Neurodevelopmental disorders and development of project of life in a lifespan perspective: between habilitation and quality of life

Abstract

Abstract
For some years, the term “project of life” has become widely used in the field of neurodevelopmental
disorders, and, at the same time, it has begun to make its way in many social
and health planning documents. However, beyond its relatively widespread use, this term
does not yet possess an adequate and shared frame of the main underlying decision-making
processes. In particular, there is a need to identify the crucial questions for orienting
the choice of goals within the adolescent transition, which represents the complex hinge
between childhood and adulthood. Moreover, adulthood, which is often completely devoid
of culturally and socially shared references, is still critical precisely because of the
lack of future direction prompts usually represented by the stages of development. In this
case, the themes of quality of life functioning as a guiding compass appear pertinent and
much more relevant. The present contribution is, therefore, an attempt to present, in a
unitary manner, the decision-making processes and questions at the basis of a construct
of “project of life” shared within the scientific and associative communities.