Health Related Quality of Life and Associated Factors Among Severe Mental Illness Patients at University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital Northwest Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Severe mental illness is a lack of psychological wellbeing affecting a person’s thoughts, behaviour, feelings and functioning. As a result, they are unable to perform day to day responsible activity that are expected of people with their age and intellectual ability. Though health institution focuses at the pharmacological approach for symptomatic recovery, data is scarce about the health-related quality of life of people with severe mental illness and associated factors. Objective: The main aim of this study was to assess the health-related quality of life and identify associated factors among patients with severe mental illness attending at University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital. Methods: An institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted from April 1, 2023, to May 1, 2023. In this study 413 patients with severe mental illness attending the followup service were enrolled. A systematic random sampling technique was employed to collect using interviewer administered questionnaires WHOQOL- BRIF, MGLMA scale and OSS-3 Scale. Descriptive statistics including frequency, mean and standard deviations were calculated. Assumptions for linear regression was checked considering normality, linearity, equality of variance, and multicollinearity. Simple and multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to predict the effect of each factor on domains of quality of life. Results: The mean quality of life score of patients with severe mental illness for each domain (mean±SD) was 49.18±15.86, 46.81±15.46, 43.06±20.33 and 45.32±18.02 for physical, psychological, social and environmental domains respectively. Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that living alone (β=-7.47, p=<0.001), and poor social support (β=-10.85, p=<0.001) were negatively associated with environmental domain, and unemployment (β=-10.48, p=<0.05) was strongly correlated negatively with social domain of quality of life. Conclusion and Recommendation: Though the mean score quality of life of patients with SMI in each domain relatively considered low, this finding indicated the significant impact that mental illness has on various aspects of daily living. Occupational status, living arrangement and social support were significantly associated with all domains of quality of life. This showed that the problem of poor QOL is a significant health problem that require high emphasis, prior intervention, early detection, and management to improve health related quality of life of patients.