[Associated factors to quality of life of patients with schizophrenia]

Treatment of individuals with schizophrenia in Brazil has been gradually shifting from an almost exclusively hospital-based approach to a community-based treatment. These patients have received treatments focused less on symptoms reduction, and more on social reintegration and improvement of their life conditions. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate the quality of life of these patients living in the community.

A review of studies was carried out to describe the distribution of sociodemographic and clinical factors that may influence quality of life of individuals with schizophrenia.

Twenty-five studies were selected, most of them from European countries. The majority of these studies was developed in the 90's. Almost all studies were cross-sectional, and most of them evaluated samples of individuals living in the community. Sociodemographic factors, other than monthly income, were not associated to quality of life. However, some studies found associations between quality of life and gender, age, marital status and educational level. Depressive and anxiety symptoms were related to worse quality of life in several studies. Such finding was also true for negative and positive symptoms of schizophrenia, but without an homogeneous pattern.

Generally, studies were not consistent regarding association between sociodemographic and clinical factors and quality of life of patients with schizophrenia. These lack of homogeneity may be due to either disease-related issues or design aspects of these studies, not adequate for causal inference.