| Abstract: | Not only chronic mental disease, but also psycho-social factors limit the quality of life (QoL) of mentally ill persons. From three theoretical explanation models of QoL — the medical model, labeling theory, and stress process model — we deduced three hypotheses. To test our hypotheses, we re-analysed data from the study “Social integration and quality of life of mentally ill people”. Data were derived from structured interviews with 305 in-patients in psychiatric institutions in the Canton of Zurich (Switzerland), and completed with few informations from their doctors’ files. Various QoL dimensions entered the statistical analyses as dependent variables. Results indicate varied explanation power of the models under investigation depending on the dimension of QoL: psychic symptoms highly influence the health-related QoL, but have only small effects on social and material QoL. Social as well as material QoL are strongly influenced by social support as well as, though to a lesser extent, by life stress events. Chronification of mental illness and perceived discrimination because of the mental disease indirectly affect QoL through reduced social support and increased psychic symptoms. From our results we conclude that social integration and rehabilitation of mentally ill people require a bio-psycho-social treatment approach. |
