Randomised trial of expressive writing for distressed metastatic breast cancer patients.

Psychol Health

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 641 Lexington Avenue, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10022, USA.

Published: May 2012

Women with metastatic breast cancer and significant psychological distress (N = 87) were assigned randomly to engage in four home-based sessions of expressive writing or neutral writing. Women in the expressive writing group wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their cancer, whereas women in the neutral writing group wrote about their daily activities in a factual manner. No statistically significant group differences in existential and psychological well-being, fatigue and sleep quality were found at 8-weeks post-writing. However, the expressive writing group reported significantly greater use of mental health services during the study than the neutral writing group (55% vs. 26%, respectively; p < 0.05). Findings suggest that expressive writing may improve the uptake of mental health services among distressed cancer patients, but is not broadly effective as a psychotherapeutic intervention.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175346PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2010.551212DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

expressive writing
16
writing group
16
neutral writing
12
metastatic breast
8
breast cancer
8
group wrote
8
writing
7
group
5
randomised trial
4
expressive
4

Similar Publications

Background: Expressive writing (EW) has emerged as an innovative strategy for improving mood and quality of life. Nevertheless, insufficient research has been conducted on the impact of offering EW to patients with HNC. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two forms of EW on anxiety, depression, nutrition, and sleep quality in HNC patients undergoing radiotherapy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Trauma survivors are more likely than others to use cannabis, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) commonly co-occurs with cannabis use disorder (CUD). Automatic memory associations between trauma reminders and cannabis use have been suggested as contributing mechanisms. These associations can be studied experimentally by manipulating trauma cue exposure in a cue-reactivity paradigm (CRP) and examining effects on the accessibility of cannabis information in memory in trauma survivors with and without PTSD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Patients with ovarian cancer often experience significant psychological distress during postoperative chemotherapy, including anxiety and depression. Expressive writing of positive emotions has shown potential in improving psychological health and fostering post-traumatic growth (PTG) in cancer patients. However, its application to ovarian cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy remains under-explored.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: To detect the differences in physical symptoms between depressed and undepressed patients with breast cancer (BC), including common symptoms, co-occurring symptoms, and symptom clusters based on texts derived from social media and expressive writing.

Methods: A total of 1830 texts from social media and expressive writing were collected. The Chi-square test was used to compare the frequency of physical symptoms between depressed and undepressed patients with BC.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Graphotactic regularities are statistical regularities governing orthographic systems that children are sensitive to from the start of their literacy learning. The current study observed changes in children's sensitivity to a set of graphotactic patterns across different grades in elementary school and measured the contribution of skills such as expressive spelling, reading fluency, nonverbal reasoning, and receptive vocabulary to children's sensitivity of these graphotactic regularities.

Method: One thousand one hundred one French-speaking children in Grades 1-5 completed a writing under a dictation task, a text reading fluency task, and a pseudo-orthographic choice task involving different graphotactic regularities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!