Quality of life in patients with bipolar I depression: data from 920 patients

Objective: To determine the impact of acute depression on quality of life (QOL) in patients with bipolar I disorder and to compare these results with published data on QOL in patients with unipolar depression. Methods: Quality of life was assessed using the SF-36 in bipolar patients (n = 958) who had recently experienced an episode of acute bipolar depression and participated in a large randomized, double-blind, safety and efficacy trial. Seven studies that included SF-36 data from patients with unipolar depression were identified in the published literature and descriptive comparisons of SF-36 scores were made between the unipolar depression trials and this bipolar depression trial. Results: There were 920 patients who completed the SF-36. Mean transformed scores, which could range from 0 to 100, were very low in bipolar depressed patients for the role-physical (36.7), vitality (22.4), social functioning (29.9), role-emotion (11.4), and mental health (31.0) subscales. Mean SF-36 scores for all subscales were significantly and inversely correlated (p