Quality of life in depression and anxiety

Abstract

Depression and anxiety disorders are recognized as major public health problems with substantial personal, economic and social burden on those afflicted and their families. Despite this the development of quality of life research has been rather slow in the field but it is evident both from epidemiological and clinical studies that persons with major depression have a substantially lower subjective quality of life than healthy subjects, and that quality of life is severely affected in a number of life domains as well as associated with a worse functioning in various external life conditions. Subjective quality of life has also mostly been found to be worse than in other psychiatric conditions and equal to or worse than quality of life in several major medical chronic illnesses. Although investigations of quality of life in anxiety disorder are growing they are less frequent than in depression and still in its infancy. This is most evident concerning post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and further studies in all anxiety disorders are strongly needed. The general picture emerging from studies performed is that anxiety disorders are illnesses that impair quality of life and social functioning in a number of life domains. There is some evidence that quality of life is most compromised in panic disorder (PD) and PTSD.