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Health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis

In his theory of emotional inhibition Pennebaker [44] proclaimed that the disclosure of stressful or traumatic experiences reduces the probability of detrimental health effects. In his experimental paradigm disclosure was induced by asking the participants to write about their deepest thoughts and f...

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Autores principales: Mogk, Carolin, Otte, Sebastian, Reinhold-Hurley, Bettina, Kröner-Herwig, Birgit
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736499/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19742069
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author Mogk, Carolin
Otte, Sebastian
Reinhold-Hurley, Bettina
Kröner-Herwig, Birgit
author_facet Mogk, Carolin
Otte, Sebastian
Reinhold-Hurley, Bettina
Kröner-Herwig, Birgit
author_sort Mogk, Carolin
collection PubMed
description In his theory of emotional inhibition Pennebaker [44] proclaimed that the disclosure of stressful or traumatic experiences reduces the probability of detrimental health effects. In his experimental paradigm disclosure was induced by asking the participants to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings relating to a stressful event during 3 to 4 writing sessions of 15 to 20 minutes. Based on a meta-analysis of 13 studies Smyth [58] reported an average effect size of d=0.47 for various health related variables. Considering the great number of studies published since then, the aim of our study was to update the state of evidence regarding the effects of expressive writing on health, including only randomized controlled trials in our analysis. From 42 trials fulfilling the inclusion criteria 30 could be used for the meta-analysis. Neither regarding somatic nor psychological health variables significant effect sizes were found. Various exploratory analyses (e.g. restriction to clinical samples) also resulted in non-significant effect sizes, except for one rendering a very small effect size. Results of our meta-analysis lead to the conclusion that expressive writing has minor or no effects on the subject’s health contrary to earlier findings.
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spelling pubmed-27364992009-09-08 Health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis Mogk, Carolin Otte, Sebastian Reinhold-Hurley, Bettina Kröner-Herwig, Birgit Psychosoc Med Article In his theory of emotional inhibition Pennebaker [44] proclaimed that the disclosure of stressful or traumatic experiences reduces the probability of detrimental health effects. In his experimental paradigm disclosure was induced by asking the participants to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings relating to a stressful event during 3 to 4 writing sessions of 15 to 20 minutes. Based on a meta-analysis of 13 studies Smyth [58] reported an average effect size of d=0.47 for various health related variables. Considering the great number of studies published since then, the aim of our study was to update the state of evidence regarding the effects of expressive writing on health, including only randomized controlled trials in our analysis. From 42 trials fulfilling the inclusion criteria 30 could be used for the meta-analysis. Neither regarding somatic nor psychological health variables significant effect sizes were found. Various exploratory analyses (e.g. restriction to clinical samples) also resulted in non-significant effect sizes, except for one rendering a very small effect size. Results of our meta-analysis lead to the conclusion that expressive writing has minor or no effects on the subject’s health contrary to earlier findings. German Medical Science GMS Publishing House 2006-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC2736499/ /pubmed/19742069 Text en Copyright © 2006 Mogk et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Article
Mogk, Carolin
Otte, Sebastian
Reinhold-Hurley, Bettina
Kröner-Herwig, Birgit
Health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis
title Health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis
title_full Health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis
title_fullStr Health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis
title_full_unstemmed Health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis
title_short Health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis
title_sort health effects of expressive writing on stressful or traumatic experiences - a meta-analysis
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736499/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19742069
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