Relationship of Knowledge of Schizophrenia and Mental Health with Expressed Emotion in Patient's Caregivers

This research was conducted to investigate the relationship between expressed emotion with mental health and knowledge of schizophrenia in schizophrenic patient's caregivers who lived in Shiraz. 50 patients (31 females and 19 males) selected through a convenience sampling from families of patients with schizophrenia that hospitalized in Shiraz Psychiatric Hospital. They responded to questionnaires knowledge of schizophrenia, mental health and expressed emotion. Multiple regression was used to analyze the data. The results showed, the expressed emotion have a significant negative correlation with the level of knowledge of schizophrenia and a significant positive correlation with the mental health. In general, the findings suggest that knowledge of schizophrenia and mental health were associated with the emotions expressed by family members of schizophrenic patients. People who had more knowledge, they had better mental health and less expressed emotion. In the meantime, the knowledge of schizophrenia towards mental health were better able to predict the amount of expressed emotion. Therefore, it is recommended to pay more attention to social support interventions of the family be taken into account in order to prevent their psychological problems in the future.