Quality of Life in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Affective Disorder

Family caregivers of persons with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia experience high level of burden and compromised quality of life. A considerable amount of burden on the caregivers often leads to display of certain attitudes towards persons with severe mental illness called expressed emotion, which then leads to poor quality of patients as well. Although numerous studies dealing with these issues separately are present, but studies dealing with relationship, using mixed methodology, among these issues are scarce. The aim of the present study was to understand how actually the construct of quality of life in different demographic conditions affect life conditions of schizophrenic and bipolar patients and determining relapse. The present study was designed mainly to assess the quality of life on patients and the families of a particular group of patients namely those with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The objectives if the present research were to study: (i) the quality of life of patients with Schizophrenia and Bipolar Affective disorder. (ii) the quality of life of caregivers of patients with Schizophrenia and Bipolar Affective disorder. Patients with disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder are more likely to relapse when there is high expressed emotion present in their living environment. The stress from the remarks and attitudes of the family is overwhelming because they feel like the cause of the problems. The patient then falls into the cycle of relapse. The only way to escape this vortex for the family is to go through therapy together to prevent the relapse. But before that it becomes necessary to understand that what is the reason behind such attitude towards a family member who is mentally ill, what is the cause of burden and what all changes the caregivers’ and the patients’ quality of life come across.