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

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.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.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.A specific interest regarding quality of life of patients with schizophrenia dates back to the de-institutionalisation process which took place in the 1960 s and 1970 s in several western countries [1,2]. In fact, as a result of mental health reforms, the effects of the shift of care from asylum to community health centres became a necessity for clinicians, researchers and health policy makers.It was apparent that capturing psychopathological symptoms alone was not sufficient to reflect relevant outcomes. In particular, information on the social functioning and quality of life are regarded as essential for evaluating long-term outcomes.Quality of life may be defined as a person's sense of wellbeing and satisfaction with his/her life circumstances, as well as a person's health status and access to resources and opportunities [3]. Clearly, such an outcome is of particular importance in order to develop treatments that can help individuals with schizophrenia to lead more fulfilling and satisfying lives [4].Unfortunately, factors influencing QoL in schizophrenia are not well known. Studies addressing QoL for patients with schizophrenia and other severe