Staff expressed emotion and causal attributions for client problems on a low security unit: an exploratory study.

This is an exploratory study that sought to investigate a number of measures of staff-patient relationships on a continuing care, low security inpatient facility for patients with severe mental illness. Twenty staff members were assessed for expressed emotion (EE) using the Camberwell Family Interview (CFI) in regard to a client for whom they were a designated key worker. Their spontaneous attributions for the patient's problems were also assessed, along with self-report staff and patient ratings of their expressed and perceived feelings and thoughts about their staff or patient counterpart.