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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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
German Medical Science GMS Publishing House
2006
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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. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2736499 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2006 |
publisher | German Medical Science GMS Publishing House |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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