Psychiatry Research EG

Quality of life (QoL) has been considered an important component of functional outcome in any treatment program [1]. Good QoL encompasses more than just good health. At a basic level, it can represent the sum of a person’s physical, emotional, social, occupational, and spiritual well-being, the study of which is complicated by the fact that there is no consensus as to what constitutes QoL [2]. The study of QoL and the focus on patients’ subjective sense of well-being is a fairly new phenomenon that has received professional attention only within the past two decades [3]. Research has consistently found psychiatric symptoms to be negatively related to QoL [4]. Addressing QoL in schizophrenia has been particularly difficult to summarize because of the disparities in the definitions that researchers have used to operationalize the concept [5]. Some researchers have conceptualized QoL largely as a subjective entity that only the patient can report [4,6], whereas others have argued for the importance of including more ‘objective’ indicators of QoL such as housing and health status, or frequency of social interactions [7]. Both sides of this argument are equally compelling. Proponents of subjective indicators of QoL point to the importance of understanding and acknowledging the unique perspectives that individuals with schizophrenia have about their lives, and proponents of objective indicators emphasize the need for measures uncontaminated by mood states and cognitive disturbances [6,7]. It is worth mentioning that a number of important influential factors can affect QoL among individuals with schizophrenia such as social support [8], unmet need [9], the severity of symptoms, age, antipsychotic-induced side effects, and patients’ subjec-tive response to medications [10]. Moreover, positive and negative symptoms were more strongly related to poor QoL among studies of schizophrenia, whereas the general psychopathology (GP) showed a consistent negative relationship with QoL across all study samples and treatment settings [4].