Abstract

DUARTE, Eugenio A.; MAMANI, Amy Weisman de; ROSALES, Grace  and  KYMALAINEN, Jennifer. Educational attainment as a predictor of attributions and expressed emotion in a tri-ethnic sample of relatives of patients with schizophrenia. Interam. j. psychol. [online]. 2008, vol.42, n.1, pp. 161-170. ISSN 0034-9690.

Strong evidence indicates that, following a relapse, patients with schizophrenia who return home to live with relatives who are rated as critical, hostile, or emotionally over-involved, known as high expressed emotion or high-EE, suffer elevated future relapse rates compared to those whose relatives are rated as low-EE. Evidence further suggests that high-EE relatives tend to make more blaming attributions for the patient's illness than do low-EE relatives. Few studies, however, have examined other important variables that predict family members' EE and attributions. Using a tri-ethnic sample of 57 relatives of patients with schizophrenia, this study finds that greater educational attainment in family members predicts less blameworthy attributions towards patients. Specifically, for Whites and Hispanics, greater educational attainment predicts less blameworthy self-reported causal attributions. For Blacks, education does not relate to attributions. A content analysis of relatives' causal attributions further reveals that, regardless of ethnicity or education, biological factors are most often cited as having caused relatives' schizophrenia. Study implications are discussed.

Keywords : Education; Ethnicity; Attributions; Family; Schizophrenia.

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