Quality of Life の向上を目指した統合失調症治療

The author reviewed studies on quality of life （QOL） of schizophrenia patients and discussed treatment strategy for improving their QOL. Although schizophrenia patients have been thought to be unable to assess their own QOL because of their cognitive impairment and objective QOL measures have been often used, nowadays, there is general agreement that stabilized patients could evaluate their QOL by themselves and then researchers gradually have become interested in use of subjective QOL measures. As most researchers still tend to assess schizophrenia patients’ QOL with only one type of the measures in spite of recent finding that there is a discrepancy between the two types, it would be recommended to use both of them as complementary measures. As for clinical factors related to lowered QOL, it is reported that depressive symptom is associated with lowered subjective QOL and negative symptom with lowered objective one. Moreover, poor life skill is found to be associated with lowered subjective and objective QOL, and several studies report that cognitive dysfunction in some cognitive domains may lead to lowered objective QOL. Generally, it is suggested that reducing depressive and negative symptoms and improving life skill could contribute to enhancement of QOL of schizophrenia patients.