Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing

TLDR

Writing about traumatic, stressful, or emotional events improves physical and psychological health in both clinical and non‑clinical populations. This review outlines the expressive writing paradigm, identifies populations that benefit, explores underlying mechanisms, and proposes its use as a therapeutic tool for trauma survivors and psychiatric patients. The paradigm requires participants to write 15–20 minutes about such events on 3–5 occasions. Expressive writing yields significantly better physical and psychological outcomes than neutral 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.