Relatives' awareness of their own expressed emotion as measured by a self-report adjective checklist

Relatives' ratings of their affective attitudes toward a schizophrenic family member (N = 54) on a self-report adjective checklist were compared with two methods for rating expressed emotion (EE)--the original Camberwell Family Interview (CFI-EE) and a Five-Minute Speech Sample method (FMSS-EE). Eighty-four relatives were included in the sample. Results indicate that, in general, the relatives in the present sample perceive in themselves attitudes toward the patient that parallel those assessed by outside raters. A higher rate of correspondence was found between adjective ratings and concurrent FMSS-EE status than with prior CFI-EE status. Relatives classified as high-EE, critical by either method, were more readily discriminable in their adjective ratings from those rated low-EE than were relatives rated high-EE on the basis of emotional overinvolvement.