HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE IN OLDER PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA AND OTHER PSYCHOSES: RELATIONSHIPS AMONG PSYCHOSOCIAL AND PSYCHIATRIC FACTORS

✍ Scribed by THOMAS L. PATTERSON; WILLIAM SHAW; SHIRLEY J. SEMPLE; SHERRY MOSCONA; M. JACKUELYN HARRIS; ROBERT M. KAPLAN; IGOR GRANT; DILIP V. JESTE

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 158 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6230
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1166(199704)12:4<452::aid-gps500>3.0.co;2-s

✦ Synopsis

Objective. Few multivariate studies relating psychosocial factors to symptoms of psychosis among older patients exist. We assessed environmental stressors, satisfaction with emotional support, coping responses and psychiatric symptoms, and sought to relate these factors to quality of well-being among older patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses.

Method. Subjects were 70 psychosis patients with a mean age of 58. Predictors included measures of stressors (number of negative life events), satisfaction with emotional support, coping responses, positive and negative symptoms, depressive symptoms, social adjustment and a general quality of well-being (QWB) score.

Results. A conceptual model was tested and modi®ed using path analytic techniques. Preliminary analyses suggested that psychosocial environment (life events, coping and emotional support) was primarily a product of psychiatric symptoms. Therefore, psychiatric symptoms preceded psychosocial environment variables in the proposed model. Further results suggested that depression mediated all of the eects of psychotic symptoms on social maladjustment, but not all of their eects on well-being.

Conclusions. In older patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses, health-related quality of well-being is in¯uenced by symptoms of psychoses, psychosocial factors and social maladjustment.