Writing for health
For people with chronic illnesses, such as arthritis or asthma, life can be difficult. Often they have to put up with pain, restrictions to their lifestyle, inconvenience and lack of acceptance by many more fortunate members of the community.
Despite the ‘miracles’ of modern medicine there are still many conditions for which there is no cure and treatment can only aim to control symptoms and try to halt or slow progression.
People in this position may be interested to learn of an experiment involving a group of more than 100 patients with these sorts of problems.
The group was divided into 2, and one half was asked to write about their stressful life experiences.
After 4 months, this half of the group was shown to have had a clear improvement in their health. While not being cured, their quality of their life had improved.
Chronically ill people are often reluctant to reveal their unhappiness for fear of seeming to be feeling sorry for themselves. However, it seems that there are definite benefits in ‘getting it off your chest’, even if it is only on paper.
Last Reviewed: 22 May 2002
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