Expressed Emotion

Expressed emotion (EE), is a qualitative measure of the 'amount' of emotion displayed, typically in the family setting, usually by a family or care takers. Theoretically, a high level of EE in the home can worsen the prognosis in patients with mental illness, (Brown et al., 1962, 1972) or act as a potential risk factor for the development of psychiatric disease. Typically it is determined whether a person or family has high expressed emotion or low expressed emotion through a taped interview known as the Camberwell Family Interview (CFI). Answers to questions and non-verbal cues are used to determine if some one has high expressed emotion. There is another measurement that is taken from the view of the patient. It rates the patient's perception of how his family feels about him and the disorder. If the patient feels that the parents are too protective or not caring the patient feels that his parents don't care of his independence or trust his judgement. This attitude may cause the patient to relapse and patients that rate their parents poorly in this test have a harder time coping with their illness if too much time is spent with the parent.

An alternative measures of expressed emotion is the Five Minutes Speech Sample (FMSS), where the relatives are asked to talk about the patient for five uninterrupted minutes. Although this measure requires more training, it becomes a quicker form of assessment than the CFI.