Quality of life and its predictors in people with schizophrenia

The author reviewed measurement of quality of life (QOL) of schizophrenia patients
and the clinical factors related to their QOL. As schizophrenia patients were thought
to be unable to assess their own QOL because of their cognitive impairment, objective QOL
measures had been frequently used. However, nowadays, there is general agreement that
symptomatically stabilized patients could assess their QOL by themselves. Therefore, researchers
gradually have become interested in subjective QOL measure. Although most
researchers often evaluate schizophrenia patients’ QOL using only subjective or objective
QOL measure, considering the fact that there is a discrepancy between the two types of
measures, it is recommended to use both of them as complementary measures. As for clinical
factors related to lowered QOL, several studies reported that depressive symptom was
most associated with lowered subjective QOL, negative symptom was strongly related to
lowered objective one and poor life skill was associated with both. Moreover, several
studies found that cognitive dysfunctions in some cognitive domains were related to lowered
objective QOL but the effects of them were much smaller than those of negative
symptoms. It is suggested that improving depressive and negative symptoms and life
skills may contribute to enhancement of QOL of schizophrenia patients.

The journal of medical investigation : http://medical.med.tokushima-u.ac.jp/jmi/index.html