Psychosocial benefits of solitary reminiscence writing: An exploratory study

Abstract

Claims have been made that reminiscence has benefits for older people's psychological well-being, and that writing memories may be a therapeutic process. This paper describes an exploratory study in which five nursing home residents engaged in a process of writing their memories by themselves, in a series of booklets containing memory prompts and photographs, over a period of four weeks. Each completed booklet was typed up by researchers and returned to participants the following week, with a bound copy provided to participants at the end of the study period. Analysis focuses on two sets of data: an in-depth case study of one participant, and a thematic analysis of field notes, researcher reflections, and the written material produced by the other study participants. The case study revealed three main themes: views on the past; sharing the past; and confidence in writing about the past. The field note analysis indicated the presence of four themes: proof and maintenance of skills; psychological or internal processes; social contact; and pleasure in reminiscence. The writing was seen as cathartic and provided a meaningful purpose, an opportunity to exercise writing skills and memory, and a focus for participants to share key stories with others. This exploratory study suggests that there is potential in using solitary writing within a reminiscence framework to improve psychological well-being in older people. However, caution should be exercised when encouraging older people to write their stories. Issues of confidentiality, audience, support, and appropriateness of the activity for the individual need consideration.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the three anonymous referees of the original version of this paper for their helpful and insightful suggestions for improvements to the manuscript.

The study described in this paper was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (Award No.: L480254031) as part of the Growing Older programme.

Elements of this paper were presented at the Narrative, Memory and Health 2nd Annual Conference, Huddersfield, 2002.

Notes

Quotes are sourced in the following manner; ([quotation number]: Participant, data source, transcript/fieldnote/booklet text unit numbers). Participants' names have been changed in order to maintain anonymity.