If you suffer from mild depression, writing about your experiences can help lift your mood, psychologists say.
Published 11/12/2008
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If you're feeling depressed, can writing help?
Joanna Rowling thought it might. She had recently separated from her husband after a disastrous marriage, had a two-year-old child and no job prospects. She soon found the best way to deal with her situation, as well as an emotionally distant father and her mother's early death, was isolate herself in a small flat and write about her experiences.
Joanna is not alone. Many people find writing is a good way to help overcome depression, especially following a traumatic event in the past, says Karen Baikie, a clinical psychologist and post-doctoral research fellow at the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales. She says psychologists and psychiatrists often recommend it to patients suffering from mild depression.
Baikie is running an online study, through the Black Dog Institute*, that looks at how the subject you write about affects your depression – whether it makes a difference if you write about a traumatic event, a positive event, or just something neutral in your everyday life, neither good nor bad.
Just why writing lifts a person's mood is a bit of mystery, she says.
It may simply be that writing is a form of expressing oneself. We've known for centuries that talking about traumatic events with others can help relieve pent up anxiety and depression. 'A problem shared is a problem halved', as the old saying goes.
People who are isolated, who don't have good social networks, or those who find it awkward or embarrassing to unburden themselves to others, may find it easier to express themselves through writing.
Putting your thoughts, feelings and experiences down in black and white can make it easier to reach a conclusion about what they mean.
There's also a theory that the writing process itself actually changes the way the brain processes memories of that event.
Traumatic events tend to be stored in the brain as emotional memory, which has a tendency to jump back up at you at odd times and cause anxiety and depression. By writing your experiences down, you transfer those memories out of emotional memory into everyday memory, so they become part of the humdrum memories of everyday existence, and less likely to intrude into your conscious thinking, Baikie says.
How much should you write? As much as you want. But psychologists typically recommend a minimum of three to four sessions of 20 minutes to an hour each time. Just one session doesn't seem to work, says Baikie.
You don't need to worry about grammar, punctuation, and spelling – no-one is going to mark it or correct it.
You can write about your past, what's happening in the present, or your hopes for the future; or all three. You can write about yourself, your relationship with your spouse, or friends and family.
Some people worry about revisiting a particularly painful event. You don't need to write about it if you don't want to, although one of the advantages of writing is that it allows you to explore places in your life you wouldn't otherwise visit, and there's absolutely no evidence writing about painful experiences does any harm, says Baikie.
You can write longhand, type on a computer, or if you prefer you can record your experiences on a tape recorder or MP3 player. Some people like to illustrate their writing with drawings, pictures or other artwork, while others prefer to express themselves through drawings and pictures without writing anything. This works just as well.
Writing and chronic illness
Writing can also help if you have a chronic illness. Several studies have shown that people who write about their experiences with chronic illness find their symptoms improve.
Much of the work in this field over the last 20 years comes from James Pennebaker, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of the book Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions.
In a 1988 study, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Pennebaker and colleagues recruited 50 healthy undergraduates who were told to write about either past traumatic experiences or superficial topics over a four-day period. Six weeks after the writing sessions, students who wrote about past traumas reported more positive moods and fewer physical symptoms than those writing about everyday experiences. They also scored better on tests of immune function.
A 1999 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found patients with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis also reported improved symptoms after writing about the most stressful experiences in their lives.
On his website, Pennebaker offers the following tips:
Find a time and place to write where you won't be disturbed (at the end of your workday or before you go to bed is ideal).
Write for a minimum of 20 minutes a day for four consecutive days.
Once you start, keep writing. If you run out of things to write about, repeat what you have already written.
Be open and honest and don't hold back.
Write about any problem that keeps coming back to your mind over and over; write down what it is about this problem that worries or angers you.
Some of the world's greatest writers suffered from depression; Joseph Conrad, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Leo Tolstoy, to name a few.
These writers were doing the same thing but attributing their experiences to fictional characters, says Karen Baikie. This allowed them to communicate their experiences to a wider audience.
It worked for Joanna Rowling, whom we mentioned earlier. Writing as J K Rowling, she's the author of the seven Harry Potter books, which, including film rights, have earned her about US$I billion so far.
That ought to be enough to cheer anyone up.
*The Black Dog Institute's 5th annual writing competition is now open – for details and entry form, see the link below.
