Quality of Life: Summary and Acknowledgements

The move from long-term psychiatric hospitalisation towards care in the community has been taking place for several decades now, but notions of how successful it is and what the long-term outcomes will be are still being formed. One concern currently receiving much attention is the extent to which community care can facilitate the optimum quality of life for its clients, providing not only the objective conditions thought to be important, but also an environment in which the individual can develop and achieve the best possible life satisfaction.


This study is an investigation of the quality of life of 11 long stay psychiatric patients who were discharged to community care, specifically to a group residence in County Cork (for the purposes of this study the name of the group home has been changed to “Glenview” to protect the anonymity of the residents). A longitudinal, repeated measures design using Lehman's (1998) Quality of Life Interview was used to obtain both objective and subjective information about resident's quality of life. For purposes of comparison two control groups were included: a group of hospital in-patients and a group of local community residents. There were three test periods at six-monthly intervals. A qualitative study was also done with residents in order to give them an opportunity to speak more freely within a less structured format, and this consisted of a recorded interview with questions relating to their lives now, more than a year after the move.

An analysis of variance was used to test for inter-group and inter-test differences, and results in general show that quality of life for the study group falls somewhere between that of the other two groups, i.e. higher that that of the hospital group but not as high as for the community control group. There were no significant differences among the groups in terms of general life satisfaction, but there were many significant differences within the various domains examined and some age and sex differences were apparent also. Quality of life did not vary much for any group over the test period. The qualitative data provide additional information, primarily in relation to areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. These results are discussed in detail, with some suggestions made for care practices and for future research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Chairman and Board of Directors of Cork Mental Health Association wish to acknowledge with sincere thanks the co-operation and support of the following:

Ms. Patricia Holley and Mr. Padraic Reilly
Mr. Eamon Colgan, Mr. Liam O' Donovan, Ms. Mary Twomey, Ms. Mary Groeger
Mr. Niall Mc Carthy, Dr. David Moloney, Staff of St. Stephen's Hospital and the
Medical and Nursing Staff of North Cork Mental Health Services.
Mr. Dave Reidy, Development Manager, Ms. Elaine Manley and Staff of Cork Mental Health Association



A copy of this survey is available at no cost from the office of Cork Mental Health on 0214511100

For more information on the Quality of Life Survey contact Cork Mental Health Housing Association