ABSTRACT
The objective of treatment for mood and anxiety disorders is recovery, which is defined as full remission of symptoms and return to premorbid psychosocial functioning. Psychosocial functioning can be measured in a number of domains relating to work, play and relationships. There is increasing interest in quality of life (QoL) as an outcome measure for treatment. Quality of life is a broad concept, but basically refers to an individual’s well-being in a variety of life domains, such as occupational, emotional, social and physical functioning. It is also a highly individual and personal concept; what may be essential in determining one person’s QoL may be unimportant to another. Factors such as these make QoL challenging to measure properly, but it nevertheless remains an important aspect of patient well-being to capture. QoL assessment scales allow the patient to assess the impact of treatment interventions upon areas of their lives that may be of particular importance to them, such as their ability to enjoy their chosen leisure activities, or the quality of their intimate relationships. Some evidence has suggested that improvement in psychosocial functioning and QoL also occurs more slowly than improvement in symptoms. Traditional symptomatic assessment scales miss this valuable ‘fine grain’ information, which can greatly enrich the clinical picture and help the clinician better assess the effects of treatment upon broader areas of functioning.
