QUALITY OF LIFE IN BIPOLAR AND UNIPOLAR DEPRESSIVE PATIENTS: CLINICAL AND SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHICAL CORRELATES

The concept of Quality of Life is becoming an increasingly important measure of the impact of psychiatric disorders and is now recognized as useful in the healthcare evaluation of patients with psychiatric disorders. This cross-sectional study examined the relationships between clinical and sociodemographic variables and self-reported quality of life (QOL) in 30 bipolar depressive patients and 30 unipolar depressive patients Participants were administered the World Health Organization Quality of Life Measure-Abbreviated Version (WHOQOL-BREF) to assess QOL. AIMS AND OBJECTIVE The aims of this study were (i) to compare Quality of Life (QOL) of patients with bipolar depression to those with unipolar depression and (ii) to assess the association of different domains of QOL with severity of clinical Symptoms and level of functioning in bipolar and unipolar depressive patients group. METHODS The QOL on the four domains of the World Health Organization Questionnaire on Quality of Life-Hindi version (WHOQOL-BREF) were compared between 30 subjects with bipolar depression and 30 subjects with unipolar depression. The subjects had to be in a moderate to severe depressive state (As confirmed by a Beck Depression Inventory total score >16) with minimum duration of illness being two years prior to the inclusion in the study. The factors that contribute or influence QOL (socio-demographic factors, severity of depression and level of functioning) were also studied. Obtained Data were analysed by using unpaired t test, Pearson's correlation coefficient and z-score. RESULTS The group of bipolar depressive patients obtained statistically significantly lower scores on all the subscales when compared with the unipolar depressive patients. No statistically significant differences appeared when comparing the WHOQOL-BREF scores with the demographic variables. CONCLUSIONS The present findings suggest that depressive patients with bipolar disorder have a poorer QOL in comparison to unipolar depressive patients.