The value of quality of life rating in psychiatry

Abstract

There is increasing interest – and an urgent need both in research and in practice – to measure quality of life factors. In the psychiatric context I would stress the importance of using the patient's subjective evaluation of items associated with well-being and not basically contaminated by social factors. The evaluation should be health-related but not primarily concern psychiatric symptoms and signs, items that should be unrelated to the quality of life domains. Global ratings with the visual analogue scale should preferably be used, and the values thus obtained transformed to utilities and practical life situations.