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.