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Emotional and physical benefits of expressive writing
Abstract
Writing about traumatic, stressful or emotional events has been found to result in improvements in both physical and psychological health, in non-clinical and clinical populations. In the expressive writing paradigm, participants are asked to write about such events for 15-20 minutes on 3-5 occasions. Those who do so generally have significantly better physical and psychological outcomes compared with those who write about neutral topics. Here we present an overview of the expressive writing paradigm, outline populations for which it has been found to be beneficial and discuss possible mechanisms underlying the observed health benefits. In addition, we suggest how expressive writing can be used as a therapeutic tool for survivors of trauma and in psychiatric settings.
... Si bien los estudios iniciales se centraron en efectos sobre la salud física, investigaciones posteriores han evaluado variables psicológicas como depresión, ansiedad, estrés postraumático y bienestar (Baikie y Wilhelm, 2005). Los resultados indican que la escritura expresiva sobre eventos estresantes o traumáticos está relacionada con mejoría en estas variables. ...
... Reducciones en visitas médicas, mejor funcionamiento inmunológico y disminución de síntomas somáticos son algunos de los principales efectos reportados en la literatura (Baikie y Wilhelm, 2005;Rodríguez y Bayona, 2010;Izarri, 2018). Se requieren más estudios que exploren los mecanismos detrás de estos resultados positivos sobre la salud física. ...
... Los resultados de esta revisión sugieren que la escritura expresiva sobre eventos traumáticos o estresantes tiene efectos positivos en salud mental, lo cual es consistente con estudios previos en inglés que encontraron mejorías en ansiedad, depresión, estrés postraumático y bienestar (Baikie y Wilhelm, 2005;Frattaroli, 2006). Si bien los tamaños del efecto identificados tienden a ser pequeños o moderados, son clínicamente significativos considerando la brevedad y sencillez de implementación de la escritura expresiva. ...
La escritura expresiva o escritura para sanar ha resurgido en las últimas décadas como herramienta terapéutica dada su relación con beneficios en salud mental y física. Esta revisión sistemática sintetiza evidencia sobre sus efectos en indicadores psicológicos. La búsqueda bibliográfica identificó 50 estudios cuantitativos y cualitativos en español publicados en los últimos 10 años sobre escritura expresiva y variables como ansiedad, depresión, estrés postraumático y bienestar. Los estudios experimentales sugieren que escribir sobre experiencias traumáticas o estresantes, en comparación con temas neutros, reduce síntomas de ansiedad y depresión con un efecto pequeño a moderado. Asimismo, disminuye síntomas de estrés postraumático y mejora variables positivas como bienestar y autoeficacia. Algunos estudios también señalan efectos físicos como menos visitas médicas y mejor funcionamiento inmune. Los estudios cualitativos indican que la escritura facilita la expresión emocional, promueve la resignificación de experiencias difíciles y posibilita ganar claridad y perspectiva. Se concluye que la escritura expresiva tiene impactos positivos en salud mental y puede implementarse tanto en contextos clínicos como educativos. Se requieren más estudios en español que profundicen en sus aplicaciones y procesos subjetivos en distintas poblaciones.
... Such findings are in line with the therapeutic literature on journaling and expressive writing. Researchers have consistently found that participants report improvements in physical and mental health with short periods devoted to writing about their experiences [53][54][55][56]. While selecting multiple choice options on a mobile app is a long way from expressive writing, journaling may take many forms and for some can be as simple as tracking experiences on a score card [57]. ...
... Mechanistically then, what is important is that the act provides the participant with a tool for reflection, reinforcement of positive experiences, as well as acceptance of negative experiences [55,58,59]. By helping participants with cognitive processing, organising their experiences and perhaps accepting negative emotions, users received a benefit from the daily documentation of their experiences without having any actual feedback [54,55]. ...
... For instance, participants will be able to skip questions, and automatic signposting is being built into the feature, so participants who flag a particular issue will be provided links to informational resources at the end of the survey. A short term increase of negative feeling has been observed in the journalling literature, but this is typically surpassed with long-term improvements across multiple domains [54]. Our participants also reported that it is important to recognise and accept how you are feeling to Page 14 of 17 Page et al. ...
Background
Breastfeeding rates in the UK have remained stubbornly low despite long-term intervention efforts. Social support is a key, theoretically grounded intervention method, yet social support has been inconsistently related to improved breastfeeding. Understanding of the dynamics between infant feeding and social support is currently limited by retrospective collection of quantitative data, which prohibits causal inferences, and by unrepresentative sampling of mothers. In this paper, we present a case-study presenting the development of a data collection methodology designed to address these challenges.
Methods
In April–May 2022 we co-produced and piloted a mobile health (mHealth) data collection methodology linked to a pre-existing pregnancy and parenting app in the UK (Baby Buddy), prioritising real-time daily data collection about women's postnatal experiences. To explore the potential of mHealth in-app surveys, here we report the iterative design process and the results from a mixed-method (explorative data analysis of usage data and content analysis of interview data) four-week pilot.
Results
Participants (n = 14) appreciated the feature’s simplicity and its easy integration into their daily routines, particularly valuing the reflective aspect akin to journaling. As a result, participants used the feature regularly and looked forward to doing so. We find no evidence that key sociodemographic metrics were associated with women’s enjoyment or engagement. Based on participant feedback, important next steps are to design in-feature feedback and tracking systems to help maintain motivation.
Conclusions
Reflecting on future opportunities, this case-study underscores that mHealth in-app surveys may be an effective way to collect prospective real-time data on complex infant feeding behaviours and experiences during the postnatal period, with important implications for public health and social science research.
... Finally, in this study, we chose not to analyse the written responses by participants in their personal diaries/responses to allow for more honest responses, though future research in life crafting interventions may benefit from this. For example, expressive writing has shown many health benefits (Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005), and this is in part due to the types of words people use, such as a progression in the use of causal (e.g., "because") and insight (e.g., "understand") words (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999). Therefore, some of the benefits of life crafting-especially the coherent narrative aspect--may, in part, come from the insights gained based on the types of words used. ...
Life crafting has been suggested as an activity in which people proactively foster meaning in life and satisfy psychological needs, yet, to date, no evidence exists to support these claims. This study aimed to use a mixed-methods approach to test the acceptability and well-being benefits of a fully online and self-guided life crafting intervention for emerging adults. In total, 109 participants signed up for the intervention and provided baseline data; however, only 41 participants completed all five intervention modules and provided complete data. We found that well-being, meaning in life, and the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness increased after the life crafting intervention; however, well-being did not reach statistical significance. Based on responses to open-ended questions, participants found the intervention helpful, motivating, and well-structured. The most effective components of the program were exploring personal values, reflecting on meaningful relationships, and clarifying life goals with specific action plans. This pilot study provides initial support for a life crafting intervention. It sheds light on a multidimensional method to help young adults live more meaningfully, warranting larger randomised controlled trials to further evaluate the efficacy.
... Research supports the benefits of writing about traumatic and stressful events in improving both physical and psychological health across clinical and non-clinical populations (16). For example, meta-analyses examining the effectiveness of expressive writing among people coping with cancer have found that it can alleviate physical symptoms (17,18). ...
Tercatat sebanyak 909,393 ribu orang dengan rentang usia 18-24 tahun di Indonesia didiagnosis mengalami gangguan bipolar. Dengan munculnya episode pada penderitanya yang ditandai dengan perubahan mood yang drastis, seperti merasa sangat sedih sepanjang waktu atau perasaan bahagia yang berlebihan yang mana dapat memengaruhi kehidupan penyintasnya. Dibutuhkan penyaluran emosi bagi penyintasnya, salah satunya dengan bantuan terapi seni dengan media katarsis melalui buku ilustrasi. Penelitian ini bertujuan membantu penyintas bipolar menghadapi kondisi yang diderita serta sebagai edukasi bagi masyarakat umum. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan metode analisis reduksi data sebagai penyajian datanya, sedangkan perancangan desainnya menggunakan metode Double Diamond Design oleh The British Design Council yang dalam tahapannya mencakup proses discover, define, develop, dan deliver, serta penarikan kesimpulan karya. Penelitian ini diuji coba secara terbatas kepada 3 orang dengan rentang usia 22-24 tahun berjenis kelamin laki-laki dan perempuan, dan memperoleh hasil bahwa buku ilustrasi interaktif “Beyond the Storm” untuk usia 18-24 tahun layak digunakan sebagai media katarsis.
Drawing on the auto/biographical experiences of four women working in the field of death studies as well as on a range of creative, professional, and academic sources about loss and the process of writing, in this article, we explore creativity, innovation and impact, and the strategies on offer in auto/biographical writing about dying, death, and grief. We ask and explore the questions: What is writing doing? When is writing doing? and provide insights into the productive potential of writing as a way to continue bonds ( Klass et al., 1996 ), live with loss and engage with grief. Centrally concerned with how first-person writing can function as a powerful practice for responding to experiences of dying and grief, we take a creative approach to the article that seeks to do what it advocates—to write in the first person, to reflect, and to explore the limits and potential of language to produce meanings from loss. The article intersperses the personal narratives of three writers (Gayle, Tamarin, and Kate) woven together by Bethan with epigraphs from other writers whose work is connected to that offered here in terms of its themes. This practice of collaborative writing, and of citing the work of others from a wide range of backgrounds, suggests and produces connections and intersubjectivities, emphasizing the theme of this special issue—public dying and public grieving—and signals the complicated, inevitably partial, and powerful ways in which writing can function to make grief a shared and public experience.
Obiettivo. Il presente lavoro si è posto due obiettivi: 1) illustrare come l'utilizzo della scrittura espressiva possa essere utile nell'aiutare soggetti affetti da schizofrenia sia nello svolgere un lavoro introspettivo, sia nell'identificare una connessione tra evento stressogeno e relativa emozione; 2) indagare una possibile connessione tra disturbo schizofrenico e alessitimia. Metodi. Sono stati coinvolti 12 soggetti schizofrenici inseriti in un centro diurno per la salute mentale di Padova selezionati in base alla presenza di difficoltà di identificazione, espressione e gestione delle emozioni, e sottoposti a un ciclo di otto incontri di scrittura espressiva. Tutti i partecipanti hanno compilato il questionario per la valutazione dello stato generale del benessere psicologico (PGWBI) e la Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) pre, durante e fine attività. Risultati. Dei 12 partecipanti, si collocano nell'area del distress, all'incirca 5 dei soggetti; mentre la TAS-20 mostra un solo quadro alessitimico. Per quanto invece riguarda gli obiettivi specifici di riconoscimento e identificazione delle emozioni, di identificazione di connessioni causali e organizzazione coerente della narrazione, si riscontrano deficit principalmente nella capacità di espressione. Conclusioni. Tale studio si mostra in linea con quanto riportato nella letteratura del caso, relativamente al rapporto schizofrenia-deficit socio-emotivi, ma allo stesso tempo ha permesso di mettere in luce aspetti nuovi, possibili input per riflessioni e approfondimenti futuri.
Seventy-two male and 73 female undergraduates were randomly assigned to an experimental group, in which they wrote expressively about a relationship breakup, or to a control group, in which they wrote in a non-emotional manner about impersonal relationship topics. Control participants reported short-term increases in upper respiratory illness (URI) symptoms, tension and fatigue, whereas experimental participants did not. Further, higher levels of intrusive thoughts and avoidance were associated with short-term increases in URI symptoms in the control group, but were unrelated to URI symptoms in the experimental group. Finally, there was a trend (p Keywords: Avoidance; Emotional expression; Expressive writing; Intrusive thoughts; Social adjustment; Upper respiratory illness Document Type: Research Article DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08870440290025768 Affiliations: 1: Department of Health and Behavior Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University, Thorndike Hall, Box 114, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA 2: Clinical Psychology, Alliant International University, 10455 Pomerado Rd., San Diego, CA 92131, USA Publication date: January 1, 2002 (document).ready(function() { var shortdescription = (".originaldescription").text().replace(/\\&/g, '&').replace(/\\, '<').replace(/\\>/g, '>').replace(/\\t/g, ' ').replace(/\\n/g, ''); if (shortdescription.length > 350){ shortdescription = "" + shortdescription.substring(0,250) + "... more"; } (".shortdescription a").click(function() { (".originaldescription").slideDown(); return false; }); }); Related content In this: publication By this: publisher In this Subject: Psychology By this author: Lepore, Stephen J. ; Greenberg, Melanie A. GA_googleFillSlot("Horizontal_banner_bottom");
Although the expressive writing paradigm has generally produced positive health outcomes, a recurring puzzle concerns how and why it works. No single theory or theoretical perspective has convincingly explained its effectiveness. This may be attributable to the fact that expressive writing affects people on multiple levels-cognitive, emotional, social, and biological-making a single explanatory theory unlikely. In addition to addressing theory-relevant questions, researchers and therapists must now address when and with whom writing is most beneficial and, at the same time, evaluate if this (and other) intervention produces economically valuable outcomes.
An emotive writing intervention (Pennebaker. 1997a. 1997b) was applied to improve our understanding of the previously observed negative relationship between mood awareness and the athletic performance of collegiate tennis players (Scott, Stiles. Raines. & Koth. 2002). A comparison group, interrupted time series design was employed to study a sample of 13 Division II collegiate tennis players who participated during the Spring 2002 season. It was expected that participants who were classified as mood monitors would experience a differential benefit from emotive writing compared to those classified as mood labelers. Mood monitors" athletic performance showed a delayed benefit from the writing intervention while mood labelers' athletic performance showed no appreciable improvement following intervention. Based on these data, sport psychologists should consider closely inspecting the mood awareness tendencies of athletes before attempting an emotive writing intervention.
We have been closet Cartesians in modern medicine, treating the mind as though it were reactive to but otherwise disconnected from disease in the body. Although medical science has productively focused on the pathophysiology of disease, such as tumor biology, coronary artery disease, and immunology, it has done so at the expense of studying the body's psychophysiological reactions to these disease processes. These reactions are mediated by brain and body mechanisms, including the endocrine, neuroimmune, and autonomic nervous systems. While a large portion of the variance in any disease outcome is accounted for by the specific local pathophysiology of that disease, some variability must also be explained by host resistance factors, which include the manner of response to the stress of the illness. For example, in a series of classic experiments in animals, Riley¹,2 showed that crowding accelerated the rate of tumor growth and mortality. In a recent authoritative review of human stress literature, McEwen³ documented the adverse health effects of cumulative stressors and the body's failure to adapt the stress response to them. Activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) is an adaptive response to acute stress, but over time, in response to cumulative stress, the system's signal-to-noise ratio can be degraded, so that it is partially "on" all the time, leading to adverse physiological consequences, including abnormalities of glucose metabolism,⁴ hippocampal damage,⁵ and depression.⁶,7
