Schizophrenia and quality of life: how important are symptoms and functioning?

OBJECTIVE the relationship between Quality of life (QoL) and global functioning and symptoms in outpatients with Schizophrenia METHOD The study was carried out on the outpatients with schizophrenia attending a Community Mental Health Centre in 2008. Each patient completed the WHO QoL Instrument - Brief and was administered the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale-24 to assess psychiatric symptoms and the VADO Personal and social Functioning Scale to assess the level of functioning. RESULTS subjects showed an intermediate satisfaction on the overall QoL and health; these data can be juxtaposed to the national standard sample rates. QoL resulted positively associated to personal and social functioning, while it was negatively related to psychiatric symptoms. CONCLUSION patients showed a fairly good satisfaction in regard to their QoL. The severity of psychiatric symptoms is one of the elements influencing QoL, together with personal and social functioning that plays a relevant role.