Levels of expressed emotion and relapse in depressed patients.

The relationship between spouses' levels of expressed emotion (EE) and relapse was examined in a sample of 39 depressed psychiatric hospital patients. Over a nine-month follow-up, 59% of patients with high-EE spouses relapsed, although no patients living with low-EE spouses did so. The results replicate the association found by Vaughn & Leff between EE and depression, and suggest that the EE construct has predictive validity in both schizophrenic and depressed populations.