Validity of a Five-Minute Speech Sample in measuring expressed emotion in the families of patients with schizophrenia in Japan.

The Five-Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) is a brief measure for the assessment of expressed emotion (EE). No prior studies have investigated the validity of the FMSS in comparison to the Camberwell Family Interview (CFI) in Japan. Therefore, we administered the CFI and the FMSS to schizophrenic families in an attempt to evaluate the usefulness of the FMSS. The ratings obtained from the CFI were then used to estimate the validity of the FMSS. The overall agreement of the two methods was 53.8%. We conclude that the FMSS may be a useful screening method for the evaluation of EE. Borderline low-EE subjects may have to be included in the high-EE group to improve the sensitivity.