Need assessment and quality of life in outpatients with schizophrenia: a 5-year follow-up study.

The present study is a 5-year follow-up of patients with schizophrenia who were in-patients for more than 3 months in 1993. In all, 19 patients fulfilled the criteria and were interviewed 6 months after their discharge. Seventeen of them also participated in a follow-up 5 years later. Their needs were independently rated by themselves and by their key workers according to the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CAN, research version 3.0). The interview with the patients also included quality of life assessed by the Quality of Life Scale (QLS-100). The results from CAN showed a difference when using a cut-off point for higher vs. lower problem at 10 needs. Using this cut-off point, five patients at the baseline and one at the follow-up had higher problems. The need ranking with key workers showed a correlation of rho = 0.68 at the baseline and rho = 0.74 at the follow-up. QLS-100 showed that the patient's total number of unsatisfied items were significantly higher (p = 0.01) at the baseline than at the follow-up. At the follow-up, full insight into their illness was shown by most of the patients. There are several possible explanations associated with the increased quality of life, e.g. less unsatisfied items among some patients and greater autonomy at the follow-up.