Maria F. Guzzo
McGill University, Canada
Title: Expressive writing with adolescents: what’s really going on?
Biography
Biography: Maria F. Guzzo
Abstract
Talking about a negative or traumatic experience can be helpful, however, expressing emotions can be challenging for adolescents. Finding the right approach for adolescents to express themselves is crucial to maintaining and promoting positive mental health. Some researchers claim expressive writing has positive mental health impacts on adolescents while others argue the contrary. Furthermore, even among advocates, there is little agreement about how or why expressive writing might produce positive mental health outcomes. Due to the paucity of research on the underlying psychological and cognitive mechanisms of expressive writing in the adolescent population, more studies are needed. For this research, analysis of journals written by adolescents during a structured expressive writing intervention was chosen as a qualitative method to reveal the underlying mechanisms of expressive writing. Data was generated through a randomized collection of student journals until saturation was met. A total of eight journals were thus kept for analysis. Data analysis combined both inductive thematic coding and conceptual deductive coding that reflected the psychological theories proposed in the literature to explain the potential mechanisms. The analysis suggests that 3 of the 5 theories proposed in the literature were found in the student journals. Furthermore, two additional theories chosen by the author but not proposed in the literature were also reflected in the journals. More structured writing interventions should be considered to facilitate the underlying mechanisms of expressive writing. More research is needed, such as using qualitative interviews to further understand the experience of expressive writing from the perspective of the adolescents themselves.