Is expressive writing effective in decreasing depression and increasing forgiveness and emotional wellbeing of preadolescents?

Abstract

© 2017 by Sociedad Chilena de Psicología Clínica. Expressive writing (EW) can be an effective way to alter maladaptive emotional reactions to stressful life events, although little is known about how pre-adolescents may benefit from it. In this quasi-experimental study, we compared measures of depression, anger, forgiveness, positive and negative affect in pre-adolescents before and after EW in both an experimental group undergoing the EW paradigm and a control grop (N=138). No significant effects between control and experimental groups were found for the considered variables, except for positive and negative affect. We suggest potential reasons accounting for these results. Given that the theorised mechanisms involved in the EW paradigm include executive functioning abilities, it is possible that preadolescents may not be able to benefit from it, due to not fully developed executive functioning skills. Our results provide useful information in order to better design future studies and prevention/intervention programmes to be implemented with preadolescents.