Past Issues

Objective:Psychiatric patients have a various care needs. The objective of this study was to study the specific and overall needs of outpatients with schizo-phrenia. Methods:With the method of the probability proportional to size sam-pling, we recruited adult patients who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in the community halfway houses (N= 136). After adjusting for factors of their de-mographic characteristics and severity of symptoms, we divided those outpatients into high- and low-functioning subgroups to assess the correlation between reha-bilitation needs and the quality of life (QoL). Results:The high global assessment of function (GAF) group of outpatients was scored significantly higher both on met needs (t= 3.03; p< 0.001) and satisfaction with help (t= 1.97; p< 0.05). In the low-GAF group, their total needs and met needs were significantly negatively correlated with subjective QoL (r= -0.23, p< 0.05; r= -0.35, p< 0.05), respec-tively. Conclusion:Understanding varied needs between subgroups of schizo-phrenia with different functional levels can contribute to identifying unmet needs and developing strategy for improving QoL in the community.