Treatment of metabolic syndrome and quality of life in patients with schizophrenia: a systematic review

Abstract

Schizophrenia affects around 0.3–0.7% people at some point in their lives - or 24 million people worldwide. This review covers topics of broad general interest that have seen significant development or progress in recent years. This paper aims to review the scientific literature of the past 10 years on metabolic syndrome regarding the quality of life of people with schizophrenia and the interventions carried out. A bibliographical search was conducted on Web of Science and PsycINFO, using the keywords of this study. More than 90 publications were found, 70 of which met the requirements. The main topic was schizophrenia, metabolic syndrome and quality of life. Those that focused on the effects of drugs were excluded. Although the association between mental illness and physical health problems has been convincingly demonstrated, numerous studies support the existence of dual physical health care neglect of people with schizophrenia. On the other hand, the modifiable risk factors are clearly defined to improve the physical health of these patients as well as the aspects which should be included in any approach to improve metabolic syndrome in particular, physical health in general, and thus modify the self-perceived quality of life. The data on psychoeducational treatments for this population were insufficient. However, some studies show that the implementation of behavioral interventions in clinical practice can help patients improve their overall health and prevent chronic disease. There are few studies on the application of ehealth devices to schizophrenic patients.