Journal Writing: A Prescription for Good Health

Writing Helps Chronic Conditions

A four-month study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that writing down details about particularly stressful events can improve the health of patients who suffer from asthma and arthritis.

In the study, the participants were divided into two groups. One group simply wrote about their plans for the day. Patients in the other group wrote about their feelings surrounding a stressful event in their lives. All of the people continued their regular medical treatment, and had their condition evaluated at two weeks, two months, and four months. Researchers found that 47% of the patients who wrote about their feelings showed improvement while only 24% of the other group did.

Dr. Arthur A. Stone, co-author of the study from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is quick to point out that the study did not focus on journal writing.

"We looked at writing about the most stressful experience of one's life in an emotional way," says Dr. Stone. "How is this different than journaling? Well, for one thing, we don't know what people write about in their journals or about how they write. In other words, if a person was to simply record the day's events in a log-type manner, then this would be a very different task than the emotional writing about stressful events that we did. But perhaps some individuals journal in a very emotional way, attempting to solve problems and by providing their journal with detailed, emotional reactions to their life. This is clearly more similar to our task."

In another study, published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, researchers examined the effect of writing about a traumatic event. In this study, some participants focused on journaling about emotions related to the event, others focused on emotions and cognitions (thoughts), while others simply wrote factually about the daily news. Interestingly, writing about emotions alone increased negative symptoms from the trauma, while those who focused on both thoughts and feelings developed a sense that the stressful event had produced positive effects in their lives.

Student Journals

Dr. Charles M. Anderson, graduate coordinator in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, had completed research on the topic of writing and health. His book, Writing and Healing: Toward an Informed Practice, is designed to explore ways in which writing can promote healing.

"Most of the writing I have dealt with is from students who work to make sense of loss, pain, and traumatic events," says Dr. Anderson. "Events such as sexual abuse, violence at schools and home, and even violence depicted in movies and on television creates significant difficulties for many students. Writing is a natural and attractive technology for addressing and overcoming the effects of such events."

While Anderson believes journals can provide beneficial health effects, he feels there are also limitations.

"In my experience," Dr. Anderson says, "journal writing reveals traumatic images and promotes a very short-term cathartic effect, but does little to reintegrate the traumatic event into the life narrative of the sufferer. To be healed, the sufferer must reintegrate the event into his or her life."