The Relationship Between Social Support, Severity of Auditory Hallucinations and Quality of Life in Schizophrenia Patients

Wednesday, 1 August 2012

Chiu-Yueh Yang, PhD
School of Nursing, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan
Dia-Ru Wei, MSN, RN
Department of Nursing, Fu-Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to understand the effects of social support and the severity of auditory hallucination on quality of life in schizophrenia patients.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to understand the predictors of quality of life in schizophrenia patients

Purpose: Schizophrenia patients’ have problems in adapting to community life, interpersonal relationship, work, and social function. In addition, with the interference from symptoms, they cannot have good quality of life even if they return to community life. This research is to examine the effects of social support and the severity of auditory hallucination on quality of life in schizophrenia patients.

Methods: This is a correlational research using convenient sampling to recruit 127 chronic schizophrenia patients from day care and outpatient departments of three hospitals in Northern Taiwan. Self-report questionnaire was used to collect demographic data, social support, severity of auditory hallucination, and quality of life. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, t-test, one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression were adopted.

Results: Research results showed: 1. The mean of subjects’ severity of auditory hallucination is 51.16. The more serious the delusional symptom is, the more serious the auditory hallucination is. 2. The average score of social support is 41.95. 3. The average score of quality of life is 46.07. The more serious the emotional-behavioral consequence of auditory hallucination is, the worse the quality of life is. The more social support there is, the better the quality of life is. 4. The multiple regression model showed that after controlling the influence of demographic data on quality of life, the emotional-behavioral consequence caused by auditory hallucination has bad influence on quality of life. Even if three different supports, family, friends and medical staffs, were added, the emotions and behaviors caused by auditory hallucination still influenced quality of life.

Conclusion: This research shows the quality of life of patients with chronic schizophrenia with auditory hallucination has been affected. It is urgent for psychiatric nursing staffs to develop nursing strategies to lessen the influence on emotional behaviors caused by auditory hallucination.