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Abstract
Women with metastatic breast cancer and significant psychological distress (N = 87) were assigned randomly to engage in four home-based sessions of expressive writing or neutral writing. Women in the expressive writing group wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their cancer, whereas women in the neutral writing group wrote about their daily activities in a factual manner. No statistically significant group differences in existential and psychological well-being, fatigue and sleep quality were found at 8-weeks post-writing. However, the expressive writing group reported significantly greater use of mental health services during the study than the neutral writing group (55% vs. 26%, respectively; p < 0.05). Findings suggest that expressive writing may improve the uptake of mental health services among distressed cancer patients, but is not broadly effective as a psychotherapeutic intervention.
Acknowledgements
Catherine Mosher is now at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in the Department of Psychology.
This study is supported by the National Cancer Institute (F32CA130600). The clinicaltrials.gov identification number for this study is NCT00624156. The authors thank Francis J. Keefe, PhD, for contributing his expertise as well as the breast cancer team at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and our research participants. These results were presented at the 2010 annual meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in Seattle, WA.