title: A postdeployment expressive writing intervention for military couples: a randomized controlled trial.
abstract: The current study tested the effectiveness of a brief expressive writing intervention on the marital adjustment of 102 military couples recently reunited following a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Active duty soldiers and their spouses were randomly assigned to write about either their relationship or a nonemotional topic on 3 occasions on a single day. The resulting design included 4 couple-level writing topic conditions: soldier-expressive/spouse-expressive, soldier-expressive/spouse-control, soldier-control/spouse-expressive, and soldier-control/spouse-control. Participants completed marital adjustment measures before writing, 1 month, and 6 months after writing. When soldiers, but not spouses, did expressive writing, couples increased in marital satisfaction over the next month, particularly if the soldier had had high combat exposure.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. jenna@mail.utexas.edu
authors: Jenna L
authors: JL
authors: Baddeley
authors: James W
authors: JW
authors: Pennebaker
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D055826:Afghan Campaign 2001-; D005195:Family Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D054542:Iraq War, 2003-2011; D008297:Male; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D018454:Spouses / Q000523:psychology*; D013781:Texas; D014956:Writing