The Power of Writing

An old but interesting NYT story about how writing seems to help cancer patients. I can definitely relate to the quote in the last line:


FEBRUARY 26, 2008, 3:50 PM
The Power of Words for Cancer Patients

By TARA PARKER-POPE
Keeping a journal may improve the lives of cancer patients. (Angel Franco/The New York Times)
When my mother was first diagnosed with cancer, she did something she had never done before. She started to write down her feelings.

My mother had always been too busy for something she felt was as indulgent as keeping a journal, but in the early days of her cancer diagnosis, she found that writing down her thoughts helped her cope with the prospect of dying.

This month, a medical journal confirms what many cancer patients intuitively know. Expressive writing, which involves writing down your deepest thoughts and feelings, may improve the quality of life for cancer patients, according to a new report in The Oncologist.

Previous research conducted in controlled laboratory experiments has suggested that expressive writing helps physical and psychological well-being. However, the recent study was a real-world experiment, conducted in the waiting rooms of an oncology practice.

Researchers from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., studied the effects of expressive writing on 71 adults with leukemia or lymphoma who journaled their thoughts while waiting for their regular oncology appointments. The patients were asked to write their thoughts in answer to the question: How has cancer changed you, and how do you feel about those changes?

After the writing assignment, about half of the cancer patients said the exercise had changed their thinking about their illness, while 35 percent reported that writing changed the way they felt about their illness. Three weeks after the writing exercise, the effect had been maintained. Writing had the biggest impact on patients who were younger and recently diagnosed. While a change in the way a patient thinks or feels about a disease may not sound like much, the findings showed that the brief writing exercise led to improved quality of life.

“Thoughts and feelings, or the cognitive processing and emotions related to cancer, are key writing elements associated with health benefits,” said Nancy P. Morgan, director of the center’s Arts and Humanities Program. “Writing about only the facts has shown no benefit.”

The researchers also analyzed the content of the patient writings. Most of the patients noted that cancer had been life-changing. Many patients wrote that the changes were positive ones and that cancer had altered their views about family, spirituality, work and the future. One patient wrote: “Don’t get me wrong, cancer isn’t a gift, it just showed me what the gifts in my life are.”

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