The effect of expressive writing on the level of psychological well-being in cancer patients

Psychological factors, such as stress and optimism, can have an influence on one's physical health, including those patients diagnosed with cancer. Expressive writing has been proposed as an effective means of affecting our psychological well-being and our coping with conditions such as cancer. This study tests the hypothesis that expressing thoughts and feelings regarding stressful events --through writing -- can improve the psychological well being in cancer patients undergoing treatment. Cancer patients were placed in either the expressive writing (EW) group (writing about their cancer) or neutral writing (NW) group (writing about their plans), and required to complete scales of optimism, self-efficacy, impact of cancer and depressive mood, before and afterward. While results indicate no significant effects of expressive writing on these aforementioned measures , there were suggestive trends towards a decrease in the impact of cancer and an increase in self-efficacy in the expressive writing group post-writing. Recognizing limitations of sample size, the results will be discussed in terms of ameliorative effects of written communication on psychological well-being.