Background: Depressive disorder is often chronic and recurrent, and results in a heavy psychosocial burden on the families of patients with this disorder. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of brief multifamily psychoeducation designed to alleviate their psychosocial burden. Methods: Thirty-two relatives of patients with major depressive disorder participated in an open study testing the effectiveness of brief multifamily psychoeducation. The intervention consisted of four sessions over the. | Katsuki et al. BMC Psychiatry 2011 11 56 http 1471-244X 11 56 BMC Psychiatry RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Pre-post changes in psychosocial functioning among relatives of patients with depressive disorders after Brief Multifamily Psychoeducation A pilot study Fujika Katsuki1 Hiroshi Takeuchi2 Mizuho Konishi3 Megumi Sasaki4 Yuka Murase5 Atsuko Naito5 Hiroko Toyoda5 Masako Suzuki2 Nao Shiraishi6 Yosuke Kubota7 Yoshiko Yoshimatsu5 and Toshiaki A Furukawa8 Abstract Background Depressive disorder is often chronic and recurrent and results in a heavy psychosocial burden on the families of patients with this disorder. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of brief multifamily psychoeducation designed to alleviate their psychosocial burden. Methods Thirty-two relatives of patients with major depressive disorder participated in an open study testing the effectiveness of brief multifamily psychoeducation. The intervention consisted of four sessions over the course of 6 weeks. Outcome measures focused on emotional distress care burden and Expressed Emotion EE . Results The emotional distress care burden and EE of the family all showed statistically significant improvements from baseline to after the family intervention. The proportion of relatives scoring 9 or more on K6 which indicates possible depressive or anxiety disorder decreased from sixteen relatives at baseline to only 3 relatives after the intervention. Conclusions This study suggests that brief multifamily psychoeducation is a useful intervention to reduce the psychosocial burden of the relatives of patients with depressive disorder. Further evaluation of family psychoeducation for relatives of patients with depressive disorder is warranted. Background Major depressive disorder MDD is a long-lasting illness with significant effects on the patient s family social and work life 1 2 . Treatment failure results in a low recovery rate and frequent relapses 3 . According to studies on
