The emergence of schizophrenia can be attributed to many individual factors, including biological causes, such as heredity and genetics, sociopsychological influences, such as social class, and social factors, including stressful life events. A particular view regarding the etiology of this illness is expressed emotion: a concept directly related to the emotional atmosphere in the caregiver's home and the feelings conveyed regarding the dependent person's illness (Whittick, 1993). When a schizophrenic patient enters recovery, he or she must be in a stable environment in which expressed emotions are low, otherwise implications, including relapse, are more likely to occur (Vaughn & Leff, 1976). Schizophrenia is a complex psychological disorder in which the patient experiences severe impairments in cognitive ability, speech, perception, emotion and behavior (Herz and Marder, 2002). Although Eugène Bleuler first introduced the disorder schizophrenia in 1911, it was documented as a discrete psychological condition as early as 1887 by Emile Kraepelin (Passer, 2009). A direct translation of schizophrenia is "divided mind" and is ultimately a loss of harmony between various groups of mental functions, often confused with dissociative identity disorder. To receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the individual must exhibit various symptoms, for example, delusions of control, hallucinations, and catatonia (World Health Organization, 1993), which fall into the category of positive symptoms. Delusions can be classified as bizarre or non-bizarre, depending on the nature of the delusion. For example, the DSM-IV-TR would consider a delusion involving a schizophrenic believing that aliens were in the middle of paper... mind and behavior. London: McGraw Hill. Pinel, JPJ (2006). Biopsychology. (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Subotnik, K.L., Goldstein, M.J., Nuechterlein, K.H., Woo, S.M., & Mintz, J. (2002). Are communication deviance and expressed emotions linked to family history of psychiatric disorders in schizophrenia? Schizophrenia Bulletin. 28(4), pp. 719-729Vaughn, C. and Leff, J. (1976). The measurement of expressed emotion in families of psychiatric patients. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 15, 157-165. Whittick, J.E. (1993). Caregivers of elderly people with dementia: coping techniques and expressed emotions. (Unpublished doctoral theses). University of Glasgow, Scotland. World Health Organization. (1993). The ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioral disorders: diagnostic criteria for research. Geneva: Publications Office.