Expressed Emotion and Its Relation with Anxiety in Caregivers of Psychiatric Patients

Expressed Emotion (EE) of the caregiver is one of the critical factors that contribute relapse of the psychiatric patient during and after treatment. Living with psychiatric patients could result in subjective burden and is usually associated with distress and stigma. Predisposing anxiety of the caregiver influences the recovery process of the mental illness. Less attention has been paid to the antecedent factors that contribute to EE of the family members. The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between EE and anxiety, which in turn help to understand role of caregivers in the intervention process of psychiatric patients. Materials and Methods: Data were collected from 150 caregivers attending outpatient department of psychiatry, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences , Manipur, regarding socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, domicile) using  socio-demographic performa, followed by  Family Attitude Scale and Taylor’s Manifest Anxiety scale  form caregivers of different  psychiatric patients. Descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation (SD) and chi square for categorical data were used. ANOVA test was also applied to compare the means of different groups. Results: Among the socio-demographic variables, statistically significant difference (P=0.002) was between monthly family income and EE of caregivers. High significant relationship was also observed between EE and level of anxiety (p=0.000). Among the different psychiatric patients, highest mean score of EE was observed in Substance related disorders (mean=49.44) followed by Psychosis NOS (mean=39.6,and significant relationship was observed between different types of psychiatric illness and level of EE(p=0.002). Insignificant relationship was observed between the duration of illness and EE. Conclusion: An avenue has opened up to understand the role of family as an important resource towards intervention of psychiatric illness  as well as the role of  significant amount of EE and level of anxiety among caregivers  indicates the need for psychosocial support to the family members for the mitigation in the EE and reduction of associated anxiety which in turn could reduce the number of relapse rates and facilitates the caregivers to manage and cope effectively with psychiatric illness.