To be sure, well-being evaluations conducted to date do suggest that up to a third of LIS patients report being severely unhappy. For them, loss of mobility and speech make life truly miserable—and family members and caregivers, as well as the broader public, tend to identify with this perspective. And yet, the majority of LIS patients, the data suggest, are much more like Lopes: They report being relatively happy and that they want very much to live. Indeed, in surveys of well-being, most people with LIS score as high as those without it, suggesting that many people underestimate locked-in patients’ quality of life while overestimating their rates of depression. And this mismatch has implications for clinical care, say brain scientists who study wellbeing in LIS patients. //

It's important to not project our thoughts and feelings” onto others, said Steven Laureys, a neurologist and research director of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research. While non-disabled individuals might say, "'this is not a life worth living,'" he added, the evidence doesn’t necessarily bear this out.