cuttack from july 2006 to june 2007 , diagnosed as schizophrenia using international classification of diseases 10 , clinical descriptions and diagnostic guidelines , ( icd-10 criteria ) and were in the acute phase were enrolled into the study .
patients fulfilling the diagnostic criteria and who gave informed consent and were in the age group of 18 - 58 formed the study subjects .
patients having co - morbid substance dependence , chronic medical illnesses , mental retardation or organic brain diseases formed the exclusion criteria . 
 modified kuppuswamy scale : this scale is based on scoring obtained in three domains : ( i ) occupation of the head , ( ii ) education of the head and ( iii ) family income per month .
based on the total score obtained , socio economic status is classified into lower ( < 5 ) , upper - lower ( 5 - 10 ) , lower - middle ( 11 - 15 ) upper middle ( 16 - 25 ) and upper ( 26 - 29)positive and negative syndrome scale ( panss ) ( kay et al . 1987 ) derived originally from the brief psychiatric rating scale ( bprs ) scale , panss has 7 items each for positive and negative symptoms and 16 items for measuring general psychopathology .
all the 30 items are given a score ; from 1 ( complete absence of symptoms ) to 7 ( extreme severity of symptoms ) andworld health organisation quality of life scale _ brief version ( whoqol  bref ( oriya version ) formed the study tools to collect individual patient information . who - qol - bref is based on 4-domain structure with six items in physical , psychological , social and environmental domain and two items from overall qol and general health .
the instrument was translated into oriya and after a series of translations and back - translations ; oriya version was used after equivalence was established . 
 
modified kuppuswamy scale : this scale is based on scoring obtained in three domains : ( i ) occupation of the head , ( ii ) education of the head and ( iii ) family income per month . based on the total score obtained , socio economic status is classified into lower ( < 5 ) , upper - lower ( 5 - 10 ) , lower - middle ( 11 - 15 ) upper middle ( 16 - 25 ) and upper ( 26 - 29 ) positive and negative syndrome scale ( panss ) ( kay et al . 1987 ) derived originally from the brief psychiatric rating scale ( bprs ) scale , panss has 7 items each for positive and negative symptoms and 16 items for measuring general psychopathology .
all the 30 items are given a score ; from 1 ( complete absence of symptoms ) to 7 ( extreme severity of symptoms ) and world health organisation quality of life scale _ brief version ( whoqol  bref ( oriya version ) formed the study tools to collect individual patient information . who - qol - bref is based on 4-domain structure with six items in physical , psychological , social and environmental domain and two items from overall qol and general health .
the instrument was translated into oriya and after a series of translations and back - translations ; oriya version was used after equivalence was established .
descriptive statistics was used and spearman 's correlation coefficient was calculated using spss version 15.0 .

 modified kuppuswamy scale : this scale is based on scoring obtained in three domains : ( i ) occupation of the head , ( ii ) education of the head and ( iii ) family income per month . based on the total score obtained , socio economic status is classified into lower ( < 5 ) , upper - lower ( 5 - 10 ) , lower - middle ( 11 - 15 ) upper middle ( 16 - 25 ) and upper ( 26 - 29)positive and negative syndrome scale ( panss ) ( kay et al . 1987 ) derived originally from the brief psychiatric rating scale ( bprs ) scale , panss has 7 items each for positive and negative symptoms and 16 items for measuring general psychopathology .
all the 30 items are given a score ; from 1 ( complete absence of symptoms ) to 7 ( extreme severity of symptoms ) andworld health organisation quality of life scale _ brief version ( whoqol  bref ( oriya version ) formed the study tools to collect individual patient information . who - qol - bref is based on 4-domain structure with six items in physical , psychological , social and environmental domain and two items from overall qol and general health .
the instrument was translated into oriya and after a series of translations and back - translations ; oriya version was used after equivalence was established . 
 
modified kuppuswamy scale : this scale is based on scoring obtained in three domains : ( i ) occupation of the head , ( ii ) education of the head and ( iii ) family income per month . based on the total score obtained , socio economic status is classified into lower ( < 5 ) , upper - lower ( 5 - 10 ) , lower - middle ( 11 - 15 ) upper middle ( 16 - 25 ) and upper ( 26 - 29 ) positive and negative syndrome scale ( panss ) ( kay et al . 1987 ) derived originally from the brief psychiatric rating scale ( bprs ) scale , panss has 7 items each for positive and negative symptoms and 16 items for measuring general psychopathology .
all the 30 items are given a score ; from 1 ( complete absence of symptoms ) to 7 ( extreme severity of symptoms ) and world health organisation quality of life scale _ brief version ( whoqol  bref ( oriya version ) formed the study tools to collect individual patient information . who - qol - bref is based on 4-domain structure with six items in physical , psychological , social and environmental domain and two items from overall qol and general health .
the instrument was translated into oriya and after a series of translations and back - translations ; oriya version was used after equivalence was established .
descriptive statistics was used and spearman 's correlation coefficient was calculated using spss version 15.0 .
the participants were in the age group of 18 years to 58 years with a mean age of 34 years .
majority were of upper - lower socio - economic status as per modified kuppuswamy scale .
22 were of paranoid type , 11 were of unspecified variety and one was of catatonic subtype .
qol was assessed with who - qol bref and then extrapolated to who - qol 100 .
association between positive , negative , general psychopathology and total scores and domains of qol was assessed using spearman 's correlation coefficient .
all domains of psychopathology were found to be negatively correlated with all the domains of qol .
the correlation of panss general and total scores with physical , psychological and environment component of qol was statistically significant ; that with psychological and physical component was highly statistically significant .
a negative linear relationship was found between total panss score with physical health and psychological health , which was found to be significant ( p<0.01 ) [ table 1 ] .
association between positive and negative syndrome scale and world health organization - quality of life in case of males positive , general and total panss symptoms were found to be negatively correlated with psychological health , which was statistically significant while general and total symptoms were found to be significantly correlated with both physical and psychological health . whereas , in case of females there was a significant correlation between positive , general , and total panss scores with environmental domains of qol [ table 2 ] .
association of psychopathology with quality of life disaggregated by gender and marital status in case of unmarried people positive , negative , general , and total symptoms were inversely correlated with physical health domain of qol while positive , general , and total scores on panss were inversely related with psychological health . in case of
ever married people there exists a statistically significant negative relationship between general and total panss components of panss and environmental domains of qol [ table 2 ] .
while examining the relationship in different education status it was found out that people who had more than 10 years of schooling had an inversely significant relationship between panss score and its components with physical and psychological domains of qol .
previous researchers have found that qol in patients of schizophrenia is influenced by socio - demographic characteristics , symptoms , insight , medication side - effects . while in the acute phase , qol is associated with positive symptoms ; in the stage of clinical stability it is associated with anxiety and depression .
the findings of the study are in tune with work done by previous researchers , more severe positive as well as negative symptoms predict a poorer qol .
however , many researchers could not find statistically significant correlation between positive schizophrenia symptoms and qol .
our study was done on patients in acute phase and shows that positive symptoms show statistically significant negative correlation with qol in psychological domains ( p<0.05 ) .
negative symptoms were associated with a poor qol in physical domain , which was not statistically significant .
it was found that panns general and total scores had a highly significant ( p<0.01 ) negative correlation with physical and psychological health , which is contrary to a significant correlation with social domain in maintenance phase .
the emotional experience of acute phase is usually so severe that one can understand the negative impact on physical and psychological domains of qol .
maintenance phase is the time when acute psychotic experiences have settled down and the person is usually struggling with negative symptoms .
male gender , unmarried status , more than 10 years of schooling showed negative correlation of general and total scores of panss with physical and psychological domains of whoqol .
female gender , married status and lower educational attainment were associated with better qol with only environmental domain of qol being adversely affected .
shtasel et al . in their work had noted that females have better qol than males whereas meltzer et al .
skantze et al . also found that qol is independent of gender and marital status .
poorer qol in male subjects , higher education can be explained on the basis of level of expectation , aspiration and perceived control , which is often high in this subgroup .
indian socio - cultural milieu often expects spouse to stand by the patient as marriages are considered to be sacred union , this might explain the fact that qol is better in the married than in the unmarried .
previous research has demonstrated general panss scores to have more strong correlation with all domains of qol , which was evident in this study also .
depression and anxiety are the strongest predictors of qol . while symptomatology of schizophrenia changes across the phases of the illness , their relative influence on various domains of qol also differs .
research need to be done in identifying determinants of qol in the different phases of the illness with an aim to target these during treatment interventions .
some of these respond to pharmacotherapy , some to intensive psychosocial interventions and still some other which are not amenable to treatment .
have shown that following psychosocial interventions , most dimensions of self - rated qol show improvement and this improvement is largely independent of improvement in symptoms .
male gender , unmarried status and schooling more than 10 years show inverse correlation of psychopathology with qol in acute phase of schizophrenia .
the domains of physical and psychological well - being of who - qol were correlated with panss general and total scores whereas environmental and social health showed no correlation with panss scores .
while certain factors influencing qol are not malleable , malleable factors need to be identified .
more intensive longitudinal studies are needed to ascertain whether qol is a different dimension altogether , largely independent of psychopathology .
longitudinal studies should be undertaken with a larger sample size to validate the results of the present study results .
longitudinal studies should be undertaken with a larger sample size to validate the results of the present study results .
 objective : to find the association of patient characteristic and psychopathology with quality of life in acute phase of schizophrenia.materials and methods : socio - demographic variables of patient , psychopathology and quality of life were assessed . 
 spearman 's correlation coefficients were measured using spss version 15.0.results:quality of life of the patients varied in different domains . 
 male gender , unmarried status and higher educational status predicted a poorer quality of life . 
 the domains of physical and psychological well - being of who - qol were correlated with panss general and total scores whereas environmental and social health showed no correlation with panss scores.conclusion:domains of subjective quality of life in acute phase of schizophrenia are associated variedly with socio - demographic variables and symptomatology . 
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study instruments
Statistical analysis
RESULTS
DISCUSSIONS
CONCLUSIONS
Limitations