Putting stress into words:  the impact of writing on physiological, absentee, and self-reported emotional well-being measures.
OBJECTIVE
Inhibiting or holding back one's thoughts, feelings, or behaviors is associated with long-term stress and disease. Actively confronting upsetting experiences can reduce the negative effects of inhibition.  The present study describes a unique approach to aid individuals in dealing with psychological and emotional issues that they must often face.


METHODS
Forty-one of the 81 university employees who were participating in a wellness program agreed to participate in the present study.  Subjects were randomly assigned to write about either personal traumatic experiences (n = 23) or non-traumatic topics (n = 18) for 20 minutes once a week for four consecutive weeks.


RESULTS
Results indicate that individuals who wrote about upsetting personal experiences evidenced significant drops in selected blood measures compared to those who wrote about non-traumatic topics (e.g., for SGOT:  4.0% drop among traumatic topic group versus 13.1% increase among non-traumatic topic group,  ANOVA p = .029; for SGPT:  24.5% drop versus 7.7% increase, p = .001).  During the month of writing, traumatic topic group subjects evidenced a 28.6% reduction in absentee rates from work relative to the eight months before the experiment compared with a 48.5% increase in absentee rates among non-traumatic topic subjects (p = .04). Subjects low in emotional inhibition evidenced the greatest reductions in absentee rates following personal disclosure compared to those high in emotional inhibition (p = .011).


CONCLUSIONS
The proposed writing strategy offers a unique tool for health promotion practitioners.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Francis
M E
ME
Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.
Pennebaker
J W
JW
D000041:Absenteeism; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001774:Blood Chemical Analysis / Q000379:methods; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009786:Occupational Health Services; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011581:Psychological Tests; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000097:blood / Q000628:therapy*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014956:Writing