Many people understand the relationship but when they have to write, they get depressed. That might have been the situation when they were in school, diagramming sentences and writing with many guidelines and restrictions. But writing can help ease depression. Writing can help improve a number of emotional and even physical illnesses.

-Team@CMHF

• Many studies have examined the ways that writing helps.
• In one study, a group of college students wrote about their basic daily activities. The other group wrote about a past trauma or challenge. Before the study, both groups visited the student health center the same number of times.
• Afterwards, those students who wrote about their challenge or trauma had a decreased number of health care visits and showed improvement in their overall health.
• Writing about challenges can help in other areas. When a large group of men lost their jobs, they were enrolled in a study and divided in three groups. One group didn’t write at all, one wrote about what they were doing day to day to get a new job, and the third wrote about their feelings around losing their jobs.
• Those who wrote about the difficult experience and their feelings had a much better chance of getting a new job. Why? Because those who processed their anger about being fired appeared as better candidates for a new job. They had found a way to deal with their feelings and move on.
• Writing about past traumas has allowed individuals with rheumatoid arthritis to experience a decrease in pain. It has helped individuals with asthma to breathe better. It has assisted individuals who have gone through natural disasters to work through the adversity. Those who wrote about the experience had far less emotional difficulties. They had less depression and after-effects from the disaster.
• What has become apparent through the studies is that one thing that is important is the creation of a story. This includes writing not only about the details of the trauma, but also your feelings about what happened. This gives you the opportunity to put the trauma into perspective. It is a chance to review how you dealt with the trauma, survived it, and what you learned from it.

Few guidelines which will help while writing about the trauma

• Understand that although in the end physical and emotional health can improve in the early moments of writing you might feel worse. If one is writing about a trauma, it is understandable that he will feel pain and sadness. But not writing about it, not experiencing these feelings means that he is keeping them inside and they are affecting his health.
• One can write in short snippets. Many of these studies had individuals write for 15 to 30 minutes at a time. But they wrote for a number of days and continued the exploration of the trauma. One need not write all in one day.
• One should try to include all the specific details like what happened, how did he feel Etc
• It is the specifics that will get him inside the story and help with letting go of the pain.
• One need not share the story with anyone else. Often it is the act of writing that is important, not having someone read it.

For further reading log on to
http://gantdaily.com/2012/01/21/the-medical-minute-writing-your-way-to-better-health/