Assessing quality of life in schizophrenia

Reading Wilkinson et al (2000), I felt that their new questionnaire tends to measure symptoms rather than quality of life. Obviously the symptoms and side-effects scale measures symptoms but a number of items in the other two scales measure symptoms as well, for example, “I lack the energy to do things”. The relationship between symptoms and quality of life is complex but issues such as the availability of money or quality of accommodation must have something to do with it and neither is covered in their questionnaire.

The authors state that in measuring quality of life the measure has to be subjective, which makes sense, but whether it has to be self-reported is questionable. The authors suggested greater honesty might be outweighed by the disadvantage that no help is available if there is confusion regarding an item. I can see no advantages in using this new tool over existing tools, such as the Manchester Short Assessment of Quality of Life (Priebe et al, 1999), which is similarly short and useful in clinical practice.