Elsevier

Behavior Therapy

Volume 37, Issue 3, September 2006, Pages 292-303
Behavior Therapy

Benefits of Expressive Writing in Lowering Rumination and Depressive Symptoms

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2006.01.004Get rights and content

Abstract

Depression-vulnerable college students (with both elevated prior depressive symptoms and low current depressive symptoms) wrote on 3 consecutive days in either an expressive writing or a control condition. As predicted, participants scoring above the median on the suppression scale of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) showed significantly lower depression symptoms at the 6-month assessment when they wrote in the expressive writing versus the control condition. Additional analyses revealed that treatment benefits were mediated by changes in the Brooding but not the Reflection scale of the Ruminative Response Scale (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991). A “booster” writing session predicted to enhance treatment benefits failed to have a significant effect.

Section snippets

Overview of study

Undergraduate students who reported elevated symptoms of depression in the past but whose present level of depressive symptoms was within normal levels were recruited and randomly assigned to write for 20 min on 3 consecutive days in either emotionally expressive (writing about their deepest thoughts and feelings on current and past emotional upheavals) or control (writing objectively about their time management) conditions. Half of the treatment and control participants were randomly assigned

Sample characteristics

As described under Methods, 5 of the 97 participants who began the study did not complete the 6-month assessment. In addition, one 64-year-old nontraditional college student from the expressive writing group was excluded from data analyses because of atypical responses and another participant from the control writing group was excluded because his graduation during the course of the study led to substantial portions of his data being missing. Hence, the final sample used for statistical

Discussion

The results of this study support the benefits of expressive writing in lowering depression symptoms for depression-vulnerable college students at a 6-month follow-up. These changes, which were found only among less expressive participants (those with high ERQ Suppression scores), appear to be mediated by changes in RRS Brooding but not Reflection scores.

Although we had not anticipated that benefits of expressive writing would be limited to high-suppressing participants, this finding does

Clinical Implications

The expressive writing paradigm has produced clinically meaningful results for both mental and physical health across a variety of populations (Smyth, 1998). The current study is the first to assess its usefulness in lowering subsequent depression symptoms among formerly depressed participants. Findings provide encouraging preliminary support for the utility of expressive writing interventions in preventing depression among relatively inexpressive individuals and point to the importance of

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