The Writing Cure: How Expressive Writing Promotes Health and Emotional Well-Being

Presents groundbreaking research on the cognitive, emotional, and developmental pathways through which disclosure influences health. Illustrates clinical applications and includes examples of how expressive writing can improve immune system and lung function, diminish psychological distress, and enhance relationships. For researchers and practitioners.

"The Writing Cure illustrates the degree to which thoughtful and exciting scientific inquiry can be inspired by a therapeutic method that works, but through mechanisms that are not fully or even partially understood. Stephen J. Lepore and Joshua M. Smyth provide a much-needed summary of what has come to be known about expressive writing--how it works across the life span from childhood to death; various psychological, cognitive, social, and physiological mechanisms that might help explain its effects; and how it can be translated into clinical practice. But The Writing Cure does more than help us understand expressive writing: The breadth and richness of the chapters give readers a profound appreciation of the impressive array of approaches that psychologists can draw on when trying to demystify an intriguing phenomenon." - Susan Folman, PhD, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

"This book definitively addresses the remarkable and well-documented finding that writing about a traumatic event can improve psychological and biological adjustment to it. It brings together cutting-edge research from around the world that has documented this surprising phenomenon and, at least as important, has helped to reveal the pathways by which writing about trauma achieves these remarkable effects. Virtually every leading scientist concerned with this issue is in this volume. The breadth of issues to which The Writing Cure has been applied is truly formidable: adjustment to cancer, violence prevention, repressive coping, and trauma. This exciting volume highlights the implications of the writing cure both for basic research and for treatment of a broad array of disorders." --Shelley E. Taylor, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles