Neurotics are dissatisfied with life, but not with services. The South Verona Outcome Project 7

Previous studies have reported correlations between satisfaction with life and satisfaction with mental illness services. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which standard measures of personality relate to each of these variables, and how they may account for the relationship between them. In this study the Eysenck Personality Inventory was administered to 174 patients known to the local psychiatric case register as part of a larger study in which the Lancashire Quality of Life Profile (LQoLP) and the Verona Satisfaction with Services Scales (VSSS) had been administered. Results showed fairly strong relationships of neuroticism and psychoticism with total quality of life. Among the personality traits, only psychoticism has a negative relationship with satisfaction with services. Although neurotics are more dissatisfied with their lives, they are not dissatisfied with the service they receive. Graphical models confirmed these findings, showing that psychoticism is the only scale that is related to both the LQoLP and the VSSS. Higher scorers in this personality trait are more likely to have unfavorable responses in both domains, and this increases the overlap between the two scales. All these effects of personality traits are not influenced by demographic and diagnostic characteristics. As a practical implication of our findings, we suggest that the patient's personality traits, with special regard to psychoticism and neuroticism, should be readily identified in clinical practice, to increase the clinicians' awareness of the problems they should face with these difficult patients.