A study of the relationship between health and subjective well-being in Parkinson's disease patients.

OBJECTIVES

Governments are turning their attention to evidence on subjective measures of well-being to inform policy decisions. In the context of health, there is, therefore, growing interest in understanding how measures of health-related quality of life relate to subjective well-being and whether subjective well-being could provide a basis for resource allocation decisions in the future. This study investigates the relationship between health-related quality of life, as measured by the EuroQol five-dimensional (EQ-5D) questionnaire, and subjective well-being in Parkinson's disease.

METHODS

A paper questionnaire including the EQ-5D questionnaire, four key subjective well-being questions taken from the Integrated Household Survey in England, and other demographic details was distributed to people with Parkinson's disease in the United Kingdom. Responses were used to estimate multiple regression models explaining subjective well-being using the EQ-5D questionnaire index (UK weights), EQ-5D questionnaire dimensions and the visual analogue scale, and patients' sociodemographic characteristics.

RESULTS

A total of 199 responses were received. Combining visual analogue scale and EQ-5D questionnaire dimensions, especially anxiety/depression and, to a lesser extent, mobility, yielded the best-fitting models (adjusted R(2) range 0.36-0.53). Patients with Parkinson's disease living in care homes report lower levels of subjective well-being than do those living alone. These effects are not captured by the health-related quality-of-life measures in the analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

Usual health-related quality-of-life measures can partially explain different well-being dimensions, yet they fail to capture part of the broader impact of disease on subjective well-being. Further empirical research into the relationship between subjective well-being and the EQ-5D Parkinson's disease longitudinally, and in different disease areas, is required, and further standardization of subjective well-being measures is recommended.