A cohort study (Rubin, Buehler ands Halpern), published as research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine examines how hospitalized patients with serious illnesses evaluate states of cognitive or functional debility relative to death. By asking 180 hospitalized patients with serious illnesses to rate a number of such states on a 5 point scale, they found a significant percentage of respondents evaluated states of serious functional debility as equal or worse than death. See figure below.
