ANTIPSYCHOTICS AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF SCHIZOPHRENIC PATIENTS

SUMMARY Patients’ attitudes and values, their concept of illness and health as well as their previous experiences with medication may significantly affect the subjective response to antipsychotics. Quality of Life (QOL) has holistic concept that includes consideration of economic development, social vitality and environmental health. For most of the researches, QOL has an umbrella concept, which covers all aspects of life and includes physical and mental health, family relations, friendship, employment, leisure activities, medical treatment and quality of care, psychological and social benefit. In the domain of mental health, increasing the quality of treatment can be demonstrated through improvements of QOL of those using the mental health services. When measuring QOL in patients taking antipsychotics, it is important to acknowledge that a variety of factors may influence the QOL outcomes: these include side effects and daily dosage of the antipsychotic, depressive and negative symptoms, duration of treatment, and subjective tolerability.