Perception of quality of life and social adjustment of patients with recurrent depression

Abstract

Depression is the most commonly present psychiatric entity in clinical practice, accompanied by significant impairment of both social and professional functioning. In addition, depression frequently develops as complication of other psychiatric disorders and various somatic diseases. To investigate subjective perception of quality of life and social adjustment, severity of depressive symptoms as well as level of correlation of severity of depressive symptoms and quality of life and social adjustment of patients with recurrent depression in comparison to the group of patients with diabetes and healthy subjects. The study included 45 subjects of both sexes, ranging from 18 to 60 years of age, divided in three groups of 15 subjects each. The experimental group comprised the patients diagnosed with recurrent depression in remission (DSM-IV), one control group was consisted of patients diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes mellitus and another one comprised healthy subjects. The instruments of assessment were: The Beck Depression Inventory-BDI, The Social Adaptation Self -evaluation scale -SASS, The Psychological General Well-Being Scale-WBQ. RESULTS Significant difference of both BDI and WBQ scales was found between the experimental and the control group of healthy subjects (ANOVA, Mann Whitney; p < 0.01), as well as between two control groups (p < or = 0.02). The level of inverse correlation of mean score values of BDI and SASS scales was significant in the control group of patients with diabetes while such levels of BDI and WBQ scales (Spearman correlation coefficient, p < 0.01) were found in all groups of our study. In the group of patients with recurrent depression, significant decline of quality of life and significantly higher severity of depressive symptoms were present in comparison to the group of healthy subjects as well as significant level of inverse correlation of severity of depressive symptoms and quality of life.