A comparison of the quality of life of severely mentally ill people in UK & German samples

The improvement of the quality of life of people with a severe mental illne ss is a key policy objective and an important outcome for clinical services . Drawing on cases assessed using the Lancashire Quality of Life Profile an d its German translation (The Berliner Lebensqualitatprofil), this paper ex plores the relationship between personal characteristics, objective well be ing, subjective well being and overall well being. These variables are comp ared in two large data sets of people with severe mental illness, one from the UK (n = 1279) and the other from Germany (n = 386). The comparison shows that UK cases have significantly lower subjective well being in almost all life domains (except safety, living situation and emplo yment). UK cases reported slightly but not significantly higher levels of s atisfaction with employment but German cases are more often employed than t heir UI( counterparts. The German samples reported substantially better sub jective well-being ratings for health, finances, family, leisure and social life. Exploration of the predictors of overall well-being shows that in bo th countries depression has the effect of reducing subjective well-being sc ores, except in relation to work (both samples), religion (UK), finance and safety (Germany). Regression analysis confirms that age, depression and ob jective circumstances make a small contribution to overall well-being but t hat subjective ratings in individual life domains make the major contributi on. The most important individual predictors of overall well-being for the two samples combined include being a victim of crime, depression and satisf action with leisure, work, health and mental health, family, living situati on, finance and social contacts. Factor analysis indicates that the varianc e in global well-being explained in both samples combined is 36% (31% in th e German samples and 38% in the UK sample).