Expressed Emotion of Family Caregivers of Patients with Schizophrenia: Its Contributing Factors and Impacts

Pages: 205-207
Roby James and Joy Tungol (The Graduate School, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines)

The challenging activity of giving care for the patients of schizophrenia demands substantial amount of energy and time over a long duration, resulting in stress and exhaustion of the family caregivers. Escalated caregiving tasks and roles lead to the increased Expressed Emotion (EE) of the caregivers. EE represents the relational disturbance between the caregiving family member and the patient. Patients of schizophrenia seem to be at high risk of worsening the condition which leads to relapse if they are living in family environment distinguished by high levels of EE of the family members, especially the caregivers. EE remains as major condition that needs to be a focus of clinical attention. There is an urgent need for strength-based or resiliency-based interventions at individual or group level for the persons and families of schizophrenia to deal with the negative emotional atmosphere in the families. It is important that the future studies should assess the prevalence of EE among the family caregivers of schizophrenia patients to initiate adequate interventions to address this adverse factor.