Expressive Writing: A Self-Care Intervention for First Year Undergraduates
Abstract
Background: As incoming students grapple with stress and traumatic experiences at alarming rates, faculty and institutions are increasingly promoting resilience and self-care activities. Expressive writing (EW) may be an underutilized self-care practice for addressing students' stressful or traumatic experiences.
Aim: This pilot study aimed to describe the effects of an expressive writing (EW) intervention on participants' mental and physical health and stress levels.
Methods: The study design was mixed methods. The convenience sample of 32 undergraduate participants were assigned, every other one, to either an EW intervention group who wrote about a stressful or traumatic experience (n = 18), or a neutral writing (NW) group (n = 14) who wrote about trivial topics. Data regarding sample characteristics, cortisol level, quality of life, and impact of the EW intervention were collected via a demographic survey, the SF-36v2® Health Survey (Maruish, 2011), salivary sampling and exit survey, respectively.
Results: Comparison of SF-36v2® pre- to post-test demonstrated higher gains in mental health in the experimental group, relative to the control group. Fourteen (44% of total group) reported that they would recommend EW to a friend to help with stressful or traumatic experiences.
Conclusions: EW may support first year undergraduates' self-care related to addressing past or current stressful or traumatic situations.
Keywords: college populations, self-care methods/groups, stress
How to Cite:
Kennison, M., Lamb, C., Ponder, J., Turner, L., Karpinski, A. & Dzurec, L., (2019) “Expressive Writing: A Self-Care Intervention for First Year Undergraduates”, Building Healthy Academic Communities 3(1), 44-55. doi: https://doi.org/10.18061/bhac.v3i1.6796
Rights: Monica Kennison, Connie Lamb, Judy Ponder, Lisa Turner, Aryn C. Karpinski, Laura C. Dzurec
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