SANTA FE, N.M. — A focus on emotional disclosure is better than a focus on cognitive restructuring when using a written disclosure paradigm for patients with posttraumatic stress disorder, Denise M. Sloan, Ph.D., reported in a poster presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research.
While some previous studies have suggested that patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be helped by writing about their experiences, the results have been inconsistent, said Dr. Sloan of Temple University, Philadelphia.
To study this systematically, Dr. Sloan and her colleagues asked 82 undergraduate students with PTSD to write about their experiences in three 20-minute sessions.
The students were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The emotional disclosure group was instructed to write about a traumatic experience with as much emotion and feeling as possible. The cognitive restructuring group was instructed to write about a traumatic experience with a focus on what the experience meant to them and how it changed their lives. The control group was instructed to use no emotions or opinions and to write about how they spent their time.
Before the first session, and again 4 weeks after the completion of all three sessions, participants completed the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Scale (PDS), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness (PILL), a measure of physical symptoms.
Participants in the emotional disclosure group had significantly improved scores on the PDS and the PILL at follow-up, while those in the control and cognitive restructuring groups showed no change in those scores. The emotional disclosure group also had a significant improvement in BDI scores, compared with controls. The cognitive restructuring group showed no significant differences from control subjects at follow-up, Dr. Sloan said.
With the Reliable Change Index, the improvements in PTSD symptom severity and depressive symptoms were shown to be clinically meaningful and not only statistically significant.