Effects of Psychosocial Day Care Programme on Quality of Life in Patients Affected with Schizophrenia - a Prospective Study.

Background: The basic aim of this prospective research was to establish the effect of psychosocial day care programme on the therapy outcomes in patients with schizophrenia. Subjects and methods: While 115 patients with schizophrenia were invited to participate, 100 of them completed the study and were subdivided into two groups. In addition to pharmacotherapy, the experimental group only (N=50) was integrated into a day-hospital-based psychosocial day care programme. The instruments were applied in three phases: the first measurement for experimental group subjects took place on the first day of psychosocial day-care programme, while for the control group subjects the same was performed on the last day of inpatient care. The second measurement for the experimental group was performed in the end of psychosocial day-care programme, while for the control group patients it occurred four months after inpatient treatment. The third measurement was carried out six months after the second one. The following instruments were applied: General Demographic Questionnaire at the first measurement, Manchester Short Assessment of Quality of Life-MANSA both at the first and third measurement, and Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale-PANSS at all three measurements. Results: Experimental group patients showed a statistically significant increase in quality of life outcomes as well as statistically significant decrease in positive symptoms and general psychopathology at all three measurements and with regard to the control group. As to the negative symptoms, only the third measurement revealed a statistically significant difference. Conclusion: The results obtained indicate that the adjuvant treatment of psychosocial day care programme has a positive effect on treatment outcomes: on the increase of the patients' quality of life, and, to some extent, on the decrease of symptom intensity in positive symptoms in schizophrenia spectrum. However, the effect of psychosocial day-care programme on the negative symptoms was proved to be considerably smaller.