World Mental Health Day on 10th October provides an opportunity for us all to take stock of our own sense of wellbeing and also to focus on what makes us feel good. It is thought that just one minute each day will make a difference.
Research suggests that it is more effective to write about your feelings than talk about your problems, and that simply making a note of three things that made you feel good each day can make a lasting improvement in your mood.
People are often encouraged to talk over a problem with a friend. The effectiveness of this approach was investigated by researchers Emmanualle Zech and Bernard Rime* from the University of Louvain in Belgium.
They encouraged participants to select the most negative and upsetting incident from their past and think about it. The participants were then split into two groups and invited to talk with a supportive experimenter.
In one group they discussed the important issue and in another group participants talked about more mundane issues, their emotional wellbeing was measured at intervals. Although the group with the serious issue felt that the experience had been beneficial, in fact the results showed no improvement in how well they were coping over the group that had been discussing the weather.
So if talking to an untrained individual provides no improvement what can help?
Other researchers** have encouraged participants to write down their deepest thoughts and feelings in a diary and these people were also analysed for improvements in wellbeing. The results from diary keepers showed a remarkable boost in their psychological and physical wellbeing.
This left the researchers with a challenge – why should writing have such significant benefits when talking didn’t?
The answer is that talking to an untrained person is unstructured; writing however encourages the creation of a story line, helping someone to make sense of what has happened and work towards a solution.
This is the basis for the CBT offered by PsychologyOnline. The act of answering questions from an experienced psychotherapist using text, combines the benefits of a structured CBT approach with those of the improvement in thought processing associated with writing.
However, you don’t need to have depression to feel a lift in mood from keeping a diary. Researchers have also found that writing each day about three things that have made you feel grateful, however trivial, will within a week make you feel more upbeat.
Why not choose 10th October 2014 to give it a try?
References
*. E. Zech and B.Rime 2005 Is talking about an emotional experience helpful: Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy 12, pages 270-87.
**. SJ Lepore and JM Smyth (eds) The writing cure how expressive writing promotes health and emotional wellbeing: Washington DC, American Psychological Association.
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