Studies about Quality of Life (QOL) in schizophrenia usually involve the validation of questionnaires, the effects of treatments or its association with relevant variables but, so far, the literature about differences in QOL between groups of patients with schizophrenia is scarce.

This work aims to show differences in QOL between groups of patients with schizophrenia defined according to socio-demographic, clinical, psychosocial and use of services variables.

The sample comprised 241 patients that meet the following inclusion criteria: 1) International Classification of Diseases-10 diagnosis of schizophrenia, 2) Global Assessment Functioning scores or GAF ≤ 50 and 3) Illness duration greater than 2 years. Patients were evaluated regarding socio-demographic, clinical, psychosocial and use of service variables. T-tests and analysis of variance tests were used.

There were no differences in QOL between groups of patients with schizophrenia established according to socio-demographic variables. There were significant differences in QOL between groups of patients with schizophrenia defined according to clinical, psychosocial and use of service variables. Patients with schizophrenia who were anxious, disabled, lacked social support and used more social services showed poorer levels of QOL.

Our results are consistent with previous studies that support that, in patients with schizophrenia, the association between socio-demographic characteristics and QOL cannot be considered significant and that QOL is associated with disability, social support, psychiatric symptoms and care needs. This work highlight differences between groups of patients with schizophrenia, which may be a useful information to tailor interventions to this sample population.