[Subjective experience and quality of life in schizophrenia]

The term quality of life has been gradually introduced in the field of Psychiatry. This term tries to integrate not only the symptoms in Psychiatric patients, but also other aspects, like individual perceptions, personal expectations, degree of independence, etc., in order to achieve a global understanding of the patient. The are few studies on quality of life in schizophrenia, especially there is a lack of self assessment scales that the patients can fill out about themselves and their psychological environment. The Seville Quality of Life Questionnaire tries to evaluate the subjective experience of patients with schizophrenia about their illness. The Seville Quality of Life Questionnaire also checks the presence or absence of groups of patients with schizophrenia with a better or worst quality of life. We have assessed 222 subjects that meet ICD-10 criteria diagnostic for schizophrenia, with the Seville Quality of Life Questionnaire, the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale specific psychopathology scale and the AMDP system general psychopathology scale. Our results show two clearly differentiate groups: one with better (Group 2: 108 patients) and one with worse (Group 1: 81 patients) quality of life. However, 33 patients could not be included in any of the two groups. In the worse quality of life group the most prominent factors were: lack of cognitive grasp, perplexity, fear of loss of control, and contained hostility. These four factors have a great influence on the worse quality of life. When we compare the Seville Quality of Life Questionnaire data with several the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale scores, we saw that the group of worse quality of life presents higher scores on both Negative and Positive Symptoms of schizophrenia, and also in the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale general psychopathology scale. In the AMDP system general psychopathology scale we saw three groups of significant symptoms in the Seville Quality of Life Questionnaire: 1. Difficult relationships with the external world, 2. Difficulty to understand what it happening (loss of associations); and 3. Affective alterations (ambivalence).Finally, these data suggests that it is probable that the Seville Quality of Life Questionnaire could be able to build a typology of patients with schizophrenia more centred in their pathology that in their psychophatology.