Quality of life in patients with schizophrenia. Comparison of self report and proxy assessments

While Quality Of Life (QOL) in subjects suffering from schizophrenia has been studied using a variety of generic or specific instruments, only very few studies have analyzed the agreement between patients and proxy ratings on patients\u2019QOL. We administered the WHOQOL-100 to 292 patients and the Quality of Life for Proxies (QOL-P) totheir proxies, respectively. Agreement between patients and proxies on the four mainQOL areas was highest for the physical area and lowest for the psychological area. In line with the results of other studies comparing patients\u2019 and proxies\u2019 ratings, proxies generally underestimated patients\u2019 physical and psychological QOL. Moreover, the agreement between patients\u2019 and proxies\u2019 ratings was consistently higher across all QOL areas when the proxy was a relative compared to a non-relative proxy. The agreement between patients and proxies in QOL assessmentis modest, but it is relatively higher when observableaspects of QOL are rated and when the proxy whomakes the evaluation is a family member who has closercontacts with the patient. In order to obtain a comprehensivepicture of patients\u2019QOL,it would be advisable tocompare patients\u2019 ratings with the assessments made byclose informants