Health-related quality of life and influencing factors in drug addicts based on the scale QLICD-DA: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Drug abuse has many negative effects not only on individuals but also on society. Nowadays, researchers pay a lot of attention to quality of life of drug addicts. However, there are few scales available to measure quality of life of drug addicts. The scale QLICD-DA (quality of life instrument for chronic diseases-drug addition) developed by modular approach could be used to measure quality of life of drug addicts with good validity, reliability and sensitivity. OBJECTIVE: This study is aimed to understand the quality of life status and influencing factors in drug addicts by suitable sensitively scale, with the hypothesis of the quality of life in drug addicts being different from that of other peoples and possibly being influenced by many factors. METHODS: By cluster random sampling method, 192 drug addicts at Kunming compulsory drug rehabilitation center were recruited to take part in the investigation. All participants completed the general information questionnaire and the scale QLICD-DA. We used a t-test to compare the scores of the quality of life of the participants with the norm (QOL scores from 1953 patients of 10 chronic diseases). A stepwise regression method was applied to explore the influencing factors of the quality of life in drug addicts. RESULTS: 192 participants ranged in age from 19 to 59 with an average age of 34.86. Most of them were male (70.3%), high school education level (67.7%) and of Han nationality (82.8%). The quality of life of drug addicts was lower than the norm in the physical domain, psychological domain, social domain, and general module, and the differences were statistically significant (p < 0.001). Sex and mode of drug abuse were the influencing factors in total score (p = 0.006) and specific module (p = 0.019). Past family atmosphere and the mode of drug abuse were the influencing factors in the general module (p = 0.027, p = 0.037). CONCLUSION: The quality of life of drug addicts was worse than that of patients with other chronic diseases, and the influencing factors of the quality of life of drug abusers were sex, mode of drug abuse, and past family atmosphere.