Symptoms, standards of living and subjective quality of life: a comparative study of schizophrenic and depressed out-patients

The subjective quality of life (QOL) (i.e. individual evaluation of one's life experiences) has been studied according to a series of different parameters such as resource availability, and sociodemographic and clinical variables, at times yielding contradictory results. Subjective quality of life and standard of life from a selected sample of 45 chronic out-patients (25 schizophrenics, and 20 patients with major depression) were evaluated by means of structured interviews. Statistical analysis revealed that subjective QOL was largely independent of standard of living (so long as basic needs were satisfied), diagnosis, and clinical course of illness, and only partly dependent on sociodemographic variables. No correlation was found between clinically evaluated symptoms (both psychotic and depressive) and subjective QOL On the contrary, significant correlations were found between self-ratings of depression, depressive cognitive attitudes and subjective ratings of QOL.