[Quality of life in unipolar depressive and bipolar affective patients].
OBJECTIVE
To assess subjective quality of life (QOL) of subjects with unipolar depressive and bipolar affective disorders.


METHODS
153 consecutive psychiatric in-patients were assessed with standardized interviews. Prior to discharge QOL was assessed with WHOQOL-bref. With the help of multivariate statistics, the effect of illness and biographical factors on four domains of QOL (physical health, psychological, social relationships and environment) was analyzed.


RESULTS
103 patients suffered from unipolar depression, 51 from bipolar affective disorder (30 fulfilled criteria for a mixed or pure manic episode). With the exception of the domain environment for (mixed) manic patients, all patients reported lower QOL in all domains than was reported for the general population according to the German test manual. Multivariate analyses revealed that the chosen variables explained between 11.1 % (social relationships) and 33.6 % (psychological) of the variance of the QOL domains. The domains "psychological" and "environment" were first of all explained by the presence of a (mixed) manic episode, while the best variable to predict "physical health" was presence of comorbid neurotic disorder. The depression score had little additional effects on QOL.


CONCLUSIONS
We found little support that the QOL domains of the WHOQOL-bref in affective disorder are only hidden depression scores, as has been argued before. Therefore, QOL could be an interesting construct to better understand differences between subjective evaluation and (supposedly) objective psychopathology in bipolar affective disorders.
Universitätsklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Halle/Saale. peter.brieger@medizin.uni-halle.de
Peter
P
Brieger
Stephan
S
Röttig
Andreas
A
Marneros
D000328:Adult; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D019263:Dysthymic Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010343:Patient Admission; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012917:Social Adjustment; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors