Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Improving mental health patients’ lost work productivity (LWP) may improve their health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and thus reduce their risk for more morbidity and mortality.

METHODS: The study investigated the association between the LWP and HRQOL of 284 mental health follow-up patients at a neuro-psychiatric hospital in Nigeria. It was cross-sectional in design with data obtained quantitatively and analysed using the IBM SPSS version 20 at a significance level of p<0.05.

RESULTS: The higher the LWP scores, the worse their level of work productivity but the higher the HRQOL scores, the better their HRQOL. There was a significant relationship between the LWP and HRQOL as every unit improvement in a number of the LWP scales, showed a corresponding significant increase in a number of the patient’s HRQOL domains for patients with schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorder. However, patients with depression or mental and behavioural disorders showed no such relationship.

CONCLUSIONS: The lost work productivity scales and health-related quality of life domains’ assessments can be used as monitoring tools by physicians to assess the level of improvement of their patients to treatment. Their roles as prognostic tools can be tested in further studies.

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