Comparison of health-related quality of life among men with different co-existing severe mental disorders in treatment for substance use

Patient-perceived health-related quality of life has become an important outcome in health care as an indicator of treatment effectiveness and recovery for patients with substance use disorder. As no study has assessed health-related quality of life among male patients with substance use disorder and co-existing severe mental illness, we compared health-related quality of life among patients with substance use disorder and the following severe mental illness diagnosis in Barcelona, Spain: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and examined the associations with clinically related variables. Additionally, we compared results for health-related quality of life in patients with substance use disorder and severe mental illness, with Spanish population norms.

We assessed 107 substance use disorder male patients using the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey comparing results across three groups with: comorbid schizophrenia (n = 37), comorbid bipolar disorder (n = 34), and comorbid major depressive disorder (n = 36). Multiple analyses of variance were performed to explore health-related quality of life by the type of co-existing SMI and linear regression analyses examined clinical correlates for the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey dimensions for each group.

There were differences in Physical Functioning, Vitality and the Physical Composite Scale among groups. Poorer Physical Functioning was observed for patients with comorbid schizophrenia (80.13±3.27) and major depressive disorder (81.97±3.11) compared with comorbid bipolar disorder patients (94.26±1.93). Patients with substance use disorder and schizophrenia presented lower scores in Vitality (41.6±2.80) than those with co-existing bipolar disorder (55.68±3.66) and major depressive disorder (53.63±2.92). Finally, results in the Physical Composite Scale showed lower scores for patients with comorbid schizophrenia (51.06±1.41) and major depressive disorder (51.99±1.87) than for those with bipolar disorder (60.40±2.17). Moreover, all groups had poorer health-related quality of life, especially Social Functioning, Role-Emotional and Mental Health, compared with population norms. Different clinical variables (e.g. medical disease comorbidity, severity of addiction, psychiatric symptomatology, suicide attempts, drug relapses) were related to different health-related quality of life dimensions depending on the co-existing severe mental illness.

Among male patients with substance use disorder, co-existing severe mental illness may influence some health-related quality of life dimensions and clinically related variables. Such differences may require tailored therapeutic interventions.