Study of the relationship between self-stigma and subjective quality of life for individuals with chronic schizophrenia in the community

BACKGROUND: Studies conducted outside of China have found that stigma can predict low quality of life, and research in China has shown that stigma has an impact on the quality of life of convalescent patients with schizophrenia. Nevertheless, there is no indepth research on the impact of stigma on the quality of life of patients. AIMS: To research the correlation of stigma and the subjective quality of life of persons with chronic schizophrenia in the community. METHODS: We adopted a stratified sampling method. General questionnaire, quality of life scale and stigma scale were given to 602 persons with chronic schizophrenia in the community. RESULTS: The mean (SD) value of the Subjective Quality of Life Scale total scores was 32.99 (13.85). The mean (SD) value of the total stigma scores was 43.50 (5.02). After correlation analysis and multivariate stepwise regression analysis, it was shown that the total scores for self-stigma and each factor were positively correlated with subjective quality of life (r=0.462, p<0.001), psychosocial factors (r=0.517, p<0.001), and symptoms and adverse reaction factor scores (r=0.363, p<0.001), and the correlation coefficients were statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: The higher the stigma of persons with schizophrenia in the community, the lower the subjective quality of life is. This suggests that reduction of self-stigma should be considered in the improvement of the quality of life of persons with schizophrenia in the community.