Assessment of expressed emotion in families of patients with eating disorders: using the Camberwell Family Interview on a Spanish sample

The level of expressed emotion (EE) in the family members has been related to several clinical and outcome related factors in patients with eating disorders. This study aimed to study the levels of EE in families of patients with eating disorders using the Camberwell Family Interview (CFI) in order to determine whether they were similar to those reported in other studies developed outside Spain. Seventy-one parents of 43 eating disorders patients were evaluated using a Spanish version of the CFI. In our sample, 46.5 % of the families had EE high levels. There were no significant differences between mothers and fathers in global scores, but mothers tended to have higher emotional overinvolvement with the patient. The percentage of families that had high EE in our sample was lower than that reported for families with a member with schizophrenia and slightly higher than that detected in other studies on eating disorders. Mothers tended to have higher EE levels than fathers.