Using a quality of life measure to investigate outcome in outpatient treatment of severely impaired psychiatric clients.

Subjective quality of life (SQL) reports in mental health settings are used with increasing frequency despite some theoretical and psychometric concerns. The authors report on 1,291 SQL reports from two assessment/casework centers serving indigent mental health outpatients in the St. Louis Metropolitan area, and a subsample of 156 clients who reported their SQL at admission and 1 year later. Standardization data for these clients are presented, as well as information on SQL domains and the internal consistency of the scale. It was found that symptom and adjustment scales comprise close to 40% of the SQL scale variance. In the 1-year follow-up subsample, the overall scale and six domains showed small but significant differences between admission and 1-year follow-up results.