Psychiatric disorders account for nearly 31% of the world’s disability and schizophrenia is one of the ten leading causes of disability worldwide. Patients with schizophrenia experience impairments in their social competence, vocational aptitude, everyday living skills and self-care abilities. In the majority of patients, these impairments are severe enough to prevent the return to independent living, even after hallmark symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions have remitted. There is dearth of published research on disability occurring in the context of schizophrenia in Nigeria. Thus, research in this field is essential. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to assess the level of disability among patients with schizophrenia attending the outpatient unit of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex (OAUTHC) and compare with healthy controls. METHODS A total of two hundred subjects were recruited of which one hundred were patients with schizophrenia and the other hundred were healthy controls. They were matched for age, sex and level of education. Patients (male = 52, female = 48) with ICD-10 diagnosis of schizophrenia who had been on outpatient treatment for at least one year were recruited consecutively from the psychiatric outpatient clinic of OAUTHC while healthy controls were recruited from the general population. Each patient completed a semi-structured socio-demographic questionnaire, the Zung’s Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS-II) and symptoms of schizophrenia were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale of Schizophrenia (PANSS). The healthy control group completed the socio-demographic questionnaire along with the Zung’s SDS and WHODAS II. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software (version 11) was used for analysis. RESULTS The mean age of the patient was 39.53 years and it was 39.47 in the control group. The majority of the patients and controls were within the age range of 30 – 49 years (67.0%). Only 26.0 % of patients were married, while among the controls, 66.0% were married. The majority of the respondents were Christians (78% in patients; 70% in controls) and of Yoruba ethnicity. The mean duration of illness for the patients was 11.76years (SD=7.56) and a large percentage (68.0%) of the patients had full insight concerning their illness. Using the Zung’s SDS, twenty-seven patients (27.0%) met the criteria for being considered depressed (Zung’s SDS score > 50) and only seven controls (7.0%) were so classified. The levels of severity of depressive symptoms range from mild to severe among the patients and mild to moderate among the controls. Majority of the patients (89.0%) were being treated with conventional antipsychotics while only a few (11.0%) were receiving treatment with atypical antipsychotics. The mean dose of antipsychotic drugs used per day (in chlorpromazine equivalents) was 374.0 mg (SD = 367) and only four patients (4.0%) were prescribed antidepressant (amitriptyline) in addition to other drugs. The mean scores for the PANSS total and each of the PANSS subscales (PANSS positive, negative and general psychopathology) were 40.62 (SD = 7.12), 11.81 (SD = 3.59), 8.74 (SD = 2.44), 20.07 (SD = 3.57) respectively. There were significant differences in the mean Disability Summary Score of WHODAS. The mean score was 28.08 (SD = 11.59) for the patients and 8.34 (SD = 8.23) for the control subjects. Patients and controls that were depressed reported higher levels of disability when compared to those that are not depressed in all the domains of WHODAS-II. A