Associations with quality of life and the effect of psychopathology in a community study

PURPOSE: Quality of life (QoL) is considerably impaired in mental illness and especially in depression. In this study, we aimed to determine the demographic, personality-related and psychopathological associations with QoL. In addition, we studied how the associations with QoL differ depending on the burden of psychopathology. METHODS: We used a longitudinal observational cohort study, enriched for high levels of psychopathology, to examine data for QoL when the subjects were 34-35. We conducted a hierarchical linear regression analysis to determine how sex, personality, sociodemographics, somatic symptoms and psychopathology affect QoL. RESULTS: Once all the variables were included in the model, total psychopathology is strongly negatively associated with QoL, while mastery and income were shown to have positive associations with QoL. Sex, personality and somatic symptoms had no significant associations with QoL once the other variables had been introduced into the regression. Due to the outstanding association with psychopathology, we tested whether the relationship had any interaction with the other predictors, but none reached statistical significance. CONCLUSIONS: The most important association with QoL is psychopathology, regardless of sex, personality, coping resources, sociodemographics or the extent somatic symptoms. The relationship holds across the other variables included and the results are, thus, widely applicable