A new study has demonstrated that writing about emotionally difficult events such as fears, emotions and the benefits of a cancer diagnosis might improve health outcomes for Asian-American breast cancer survivors.
The research conducted by a researcher at the University of Houston (UH) showed writing such difficult events for just 20 to 30 minutes at a time over three or four days increased the immune function.
Qian Lu, assistant professor and director of the Culture and Health Research Center at UH said that the key to developing an expressive writing intervention was the writing instruction otherwise, writing was just like a journal recording facts and events.
Lu said that found long-term physical and psychological health benefits when research participants wrote about their deepest fears and the benefits of a breast cancer diagnosis.he explained that the interesting thing about the concept of writing was that it had been proven as a scientific paradigm.
Lu further added that the findings from the study suggested that participants perceived the writing task to be easy, revealed their emotions, and disclosed their experiences in writing that they had not previously told others.
The study is published in Health Psychology.
