Journaling

Research summary

• Expressive-writing and journaling interventions — writing about a stressful or traumatic experience for a set period, following the classic Pennebaker paradigm — have been tested in numerous randomized controlled trials, and the accumulated evidence has not shown the general health benefit the practice is often assumed to have.
• A meta-analysis of 16 randomized controlled trials in cancer patients and survivors found no statistically significant effect on psychological health (Hedges's g 0.04), physical health (0.08), or quality of life (0.09).
• That null finding is echoed across individual trials: a 507-woman nationwide trial in Danish breast cancer patients found no overall effect on physical symptoms or healthcare use, with a modest benefit only in a small subgroup low in alexithymia who wrote specifically about their own cancer; a 112-patient trial in women on chemotherapy found no difference in quality of life regardless of how much writing was assigned; and a 116-person trial in healthy young adults found no significant effect on anxiety, depression or physical symptoms overall — and among people who don't naturally express emotion, expressive writing actually increased anxiety at 3-month follow-up.
• A 564-woman postpartum trial similarly found no effect on physical or psychological health at 1 or 6 months, though participants did report an immediate reduction in stress right after writing, and the intervention was associated with lower downstream healthcare costs.
• Journaling is inexpensive and appears to produce a real short-term stress-relief effect in the moment, but multiple well-powered randomized trials converge on a discouraging picture for any lasting effect on physical or mental health.