BACKGROUND Glaucoma is a chronic and progressive optic neuropathy. It is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide and blindness from glaucoma can occur despite therapy. Ocular diseases can have a major impact on quality of life because visual impairment potentially affects many aspects of human functioning. Psychiatric morbidities are known to co-occur with most chronic medical illnesses and also contribute to the impact of such illness on the quality of life of the affected patient. Perceived family support has been identified as an important and modifiable factor associated with psychiatric morbidity and quality of life of subjects with other chronic illnesses. OBJECTIVES To describe the pattern of psychiatric morbidities, perceived family support and subjective quality of life of glaucoma patients receiving care in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. METHODOLOGY A cross sectional study of 330 glaucoma patients selected by systematic random sampling at the Glaucoma Clinic, University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital was carried out. Socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of all the subjects were recorded and a two phase case identification for psychiatric morbidity in the subjects was done using the GHQ12 and SCAN. Subjective quality of life and perceived family support were assessed for the subjects with and those without psychiatric morbidity using the WHOQOL-bref and perceived social support family scale respectively. The results were analyzed using SPSS 16.0. RESULTS This study showed that the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among subjects with glaucoma was 36.9% and that psychiatric morbidity negatively impacts on multiple areas of quality of life of subjects with glaucoma. Depression (16.4%), generalized anxiety disorder (14.8%), undifferentiated somatoform disorder (2.4%) and panic disorder (2.1%) were the most prevalent psychiatric disorders in the study population. Subjects between the ages of 30 to 39 years and 60 to 69 years and those with weak family support had higher prevalence’s of psychiatric morbidity. Psychiatric morbidity was commonest (47.5%) among subjects with advanced stage glaucoma. Majority (64.8%) of the subjects with psychiatric morbidity also reported a weak perceived family support. Following a multivariate logistic regression age, severity of glaucoma and family support were found to be important predictors of psychiatric morbidity (p<0.05). It was also found that psychiatric morbidity negatively impacted on multiple domains of the quality of life of affected subjects.(p<0.05) These subjects were 7.6, 12.8 and 7.8 times more likely to have a poor quality of life in domains 1, 2 and 3 of the WHOQOL bref respectively, compared to subjects without psychiatric morbidity. Furthermore, glaucoma patients with a weak family support were more likely to rate their overall health related quality of life poor (Odds ratio=0.094, 95% CI=0.041-0.214, p<0.05) and also more likely to have a psychiatric morbidity. CONCLUSION Psychiatric morbidity has been found to be a significant problem associated with glaucoma that adversely affects the quality of life of these patients. Since the ultimate goal of the management of glaucoma is to ensure minimal decline in the quality of life of the affected patient, the integration of mental health services into the care of glaucoma patients to ensure regular assessment of their mental health status and routine optimization of their level of family support is pertinent. Key words: glaucoma, psychiatric morbidity, quality of life, perceived family support