Improving mental health in health care practitioners: randomized controlled trial of a gratitude intervention
One of the strongest gratitude journaling results on record. In a double-blind trial across five hospitals, practitioners who wrote gratitude diaries twice a week for four weeks reported lower depressive symptoms (d = -0.49) and substantially lower perceived stress (d = -0.95) three months later than controls.
Twice a week for four weeks, and the stress effect was still measurable three months later.
Cheng and colleagues ran a double-blind randomised controlled trial in five public hospitals. One hundred and two practitioners were assigned to one of three conditions: write a work-related gratitude diary, write a work-related hassle diary, or write nothing. The two diary groups wrote twice a week for four consecutive weeks.
At three-month follow-up, relative to no-diary control, the gratitude group reported:
- Depressive symptoms 1.50 points lower, d = -0.49
- Perceived stress 2.65 points lower, d = -0.95
The hassle group and the control group were, in the authors’ phrase, basically indistinct from each other.
Two design details make this study unusually trustworthy. It was double-blind, which is rare in this literature. And it included the hassle condition - so the comparison is not writing versus nothing, but what you write about. Writing itself did not produce the benefit. Writing about what went right did.
And the dose is small. Twice a week, for four weeks. That is eight entries.
It studied 102 people in one profession under chronic occupational stress, so it does not generalise straightforwardly to the general public. The effect sizes are much larger than the pooled estimate across the whole literature, which should make you treat them as a promising single result rather than the expected outcome. Outcomes were self-reported.
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Summarized by Tiago Martins · Last updated: · How we write these
