Quality of life in the elderly with affective disturbances: Biological mechanisms and pathogenesis

Summary terest in quality of life (QOL) is quite new in medicine and psychiatrists have started systematic researches concerning the QOL of persons with men tal disorders only in the beginning of the eighties. This interest has historical reasons. One of the main approaches of psychiatry to study mental disorders was the study of their symptoms to develop nosologies. Now, new orientations try to study the link between mental disorders and personal impairments, disabilities and handicaps. This link between disorders and disabilities is completed by the study of QOL. This explains why it is necessary to develop parallel strategies for clinical, disability and QOL assessments in psychiatry. Treatments should be planned taking into account risk/benefit ratios at individual, familial and social levels. Clinical researches developing new treatments or identifying biological markers of mental disorders should also consider not only improvement of symptoms but of QOL, too. This paper is an review of QOL assessment and some links between QOL and clinical, biological, and pharmacological aspects of mental disorders in old age.