Expressed emotion studies in Japan

The Camberwell Family Interview (CFI) for the measurement of Expressed Emotion (EE) was introduced in Japan in 1990. In the 10 years since then, many EE studies have been conducted in Japan. In this report, 13 Japanese EE studies written in English are reviewed. Japanese EE studies can be classified into two groups: those that used the CFI and those that used the Five-Minute Speech Sample (FMSS). These two groups consisted of two fields of schizophrenia and mood disorders. In Japanese, the prediction of recurrence by using EE measured by the CFI and the FMSS has been shown to be more accurate in mood disorders than in schizophrenia, as shown in a prior study by Vaughn and Leff (1976). From an intercultural viewpoint, Japanese critical comments (CCs), which are the main components of EE, were different from those of the English in their distribution and contents. Positive symptoms were the most frequent comments (34%) and negative symptoms were not so frequent (11%) in a schizophrenic CFI study. No marked difference was found in the optimal cutoff point of CC in patients with schizophrenia and mood disorders between Japan and Western countries, but CCs were less frequent in Japanese families.