OBJECTIVES: Outcomes research in patients with schizophrenia should take into account the subjective interpretation of the mood and physical changes accompanying medication. Those changes influence the behavioural response to treatment and ultimately the patient’s clinical outcome as mediated by his treatment compliance. Our aim was to assess the relationship between a specific well-being measure, the SWN-K20 that presents a general and 5 specific measurement subdomains (mental functioning, social integration, emotional regulation, physical functioning, and self-control), and the 8 domains of the SF-36 v1 as a general quality of life measure. METHODS: The validation sample for this study comprised 97 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and who were rated as clinically stable at the moment of the study (1 week test-retest intraclass correlation coefficient for clinical symptoms = 0.96). The patients were recruited as part of a multicenter psychometric trial to validate the SWN-K20 in Spanish. The associations between the domains of the SWN-K20 and the SF-36 were evaluated by the Spearman’s rank correlation test.  RESULTS: All correlations among domains were positive and most were statistically significant (p <0.05). As expected the bodily pain domain of the SF-36 presented the lower correlations with the SWN-K20 (rho range of 0.10 to 0.25), whereas the other 7 domains correlated significantly with the total SWN-K20 score (rho range 0.49 to 0.60, all p <0.001). Overall the largest correlations were obtained between the SWN-K20 and the SF-36 domains of general health (rho = 0.53), mental health (rho = 0.60), and vitality (rho = 0.54).  CONCLUSIONS: The positive but nevertheless moderate correlations observed between a specific well-being scale, as the SWN-K20, and a general quality of life scale, as the SF-36, supports the inclusion of specific and diagnose-tailored instruments for outcome assessments of patients with schizophrenia.