Expressed emotion (EE) is a measure of a caregiver's critical and emotionally overinvolved (EOI; e.g., intrusive, self-sacrificing) attitudes and behaviors toward a person with a mental illness. Mounting evidence indicates that high levels of these critical and EOI attitudes and behaviors (collectively termed high EE) in family members are associated with a poorer course of illness for people with a range of disorders, including dementia (Nomura et al., 2005). However, less is known about factors that might trigger high EE and how high EE might impact dementia caregivers' own mental health. In this study we propose that caregivers who perceive stigma from their relative's illness may be more likely to be critical or intrusive (high EOI) toward their relative in an attempt to control symptomatic behaviors. We further hypothesized that high EE would partially mediate the link between stigma and quality of life (QoL) as there is some evidence that high EE is associated with poorer mental health in caregivers themselves (Safavi et al., 2015). In line with study hypotheses and using a sample of 106 dementia caregivers, we found that greater caregiver stigma was associated with both high EE (for criticism and EOI) and with poorer QoL. Mediational analyses further confirmed that high EE accounts for much of the association between stigma and poorer QoL. Study results suggest that addressing caregiver stigma in therapy could reduce levels of high EE and indirectly therefore improve caregiver QoL. Intervening directly to reduce high EE could also improve caregiver QoL.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 November 2017.
All research outputs
#7,688,404
of 28,832,041 outputs
Outputs from Family Process
#413
of 1,182 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#102,402
of 343,093 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Family Process
#8
of 16 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,832,041 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 72nd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,182 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 62% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 16 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 37th percentile – i.e., 37% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
