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Acceptance-Enhanced Expressive Writing Prevents Symptoms in Participants with Low Initial Depression

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Abstract

Traditional expressive writing (EW) and EW augmented by emotion-acceptance instructions (EWEA) were compared to non-emotional control writing for their ability to forestall depression symptoms in undergraduates with high or low initial levels of depression symptomatology. EWEA instructions encouraged participants to take a more accepting, “emotion friendly” approach toward expressive writing, stressing the importance of “staying present” with difficult emotional experiences non-judgmentally and with openness. Writing condition interacted significantly with initial depression such that at the 5-week posttest, EWEA was more beneficial than control writing for participants with low to mild initial depression symptoms (CESD <17) and EW was more beneficial than control writing for participants with very low initial depression symptoms (CESD <8). But for the EW condition, this effect was reversed such that participants in this condition with high initial depression (CESD >26) fared worse at posttest than those in the control group.

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Notes

  1. In order to verify that condition instructions differed as intended, ratings were collected from a separate sample of 181 (109 females and 72 males) undergraduates drawn from the same subject pool as the study sample. Raters viewed just one of the three writing scripts (92, 93, and 89 participants were assigned to rate the control, EW, and EWEA scripts, respectively). MANOVA showed that, as expected, the EWEA script was rated more highly than the EW condition on its encouragement to: “understand that everyone feels distress;” “accept that my emotions are normal;” “take a nonjudgmental attitude toward my own reactions and experiences;” and “decrease feelings of shame I might be having” (Wilk’s Lambda = .92, F [4,177] = 3.98, P = .004, eta2 = .08). In addition, each active writing script was rated more highly than the control script on the vector of eight dimensions that included the above plus “express my emotions;” “write about my deepest thoughts and feelings;” “write honestly about what I was feeling;” and “open up about what I was experiencing, (Wilk’s Lambda = .48, F [8,172] = 22.88, P < .001, eta2 = .52, and Wilk’s Lambda = .48, F [8,176] = 23.63, P < .001, eta2 = .52, respectively.”.

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    Emily S. Baum & Stephanie S. Rude

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  1. Emily S. Baum
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Correspondence to Stephanie S. Rude.

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This article is based on the dissertation of the first author.

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Baum, E.S., Rude, S.S. Acceptance-Enhanced Expressive Writing Prevents Symptoms in Participants with Low Initial Depression. Cogn Ther Res 37, 35–42 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-012-9435-x

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