There are major health care implications of quality of life (QOL) in longstanding disorders such as Bipolar affective disorder (BD) for the patients and their caregivers.

The aim of the present study is to compare quality of life among bipolar disorder patients, their caregivers and to assess whether the level of depression correlates with the scores of quality of life in Bipolar Disorder patients.

We compared bipolar disorder (N = 40), their caregivers (N = 40) and no psychiatric illnesses (N = 150) on health related quality of life (HRQOL) which was assessed using the 26-item World Health Organization QOL instrument (WHOQOL-BREF Hindi version). All patients were diagnosed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM IV. Within the group with bipolar disorder, we examined the relationship between HRQOL using WHOQOL BREF Hindi version and depression assessed using the 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS).

Patients in bipolar disorder group had lower QOL on all the four domains compared to healthy controls, caregivers. The four domains of the WHOQOL scale correlated negatively with the HDRS.

Our findings suggest that bipolar depression and residual symptoms of depression are negatively correlated with QOL in BD patients.