Online positive affect journaling in the improvement of mental distress and well-being in general medical patients with elevated anxiety symptoms: a preliminary randomized controlled trial
A randomised trial of short, frequent journaling sessions. Seventy adults with medical conditions and elevated anxiety wrote for 15 minutes, three days a week, for 12 weeks; compared with usual care they reported less depressive symptoms and anxiety after one month and greater resilience after the first and second months.
The closest thing in the literature to the format most people actually use: short sessions, a few times a week, for a few months.
Seventy adults with various medical conditions and elevated anxiety were randomly assigned either to web-based positive affect journaling or to usual care. The intervention group wrote for 15 minutes, three days a week, for 12 weeks.
Relative to usual care, the journaling group showed less depressive symptoms and anxiety after one month, and greater resilience after the first and second months.
The dosage is the useful part. Fifteen minutes, three times a week, is a schedule a person can actually keep - and it is the schedule that was tested. Nothing here requires writing daily or at length.
The authors describe adherence as moderate and the trial as preliminary. Treat it as a well-designed hint rather than a settled result.
The authors call it preliminary, and 70 participants across two arms is small. It studied medical patients with elevated anxiety, not the general public, so the size of any benefit for a healthy adult is unknown. Adherence was only moderate, and outcomes were self-reported surveys rather than clinical assessment.
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Summarized by Tiago Martins · Last updated: · How we write these
