A brief shared writing exercise can enhance communication and reduce self-perceived stress. It can be helpful even for people who have not used journaling or expressive writing in the past. This has been demonstrated when Three-Minute Mental Makeover (3MMM), an expressive writing tool that was developed by a hospital’s narrative medicine group has been evaluated. Patients of this study were from metropolitan Chicago-area children’s hospitals and were recruited from December 2016 to July 2017. The participants were newborns to 24-year-old individuals. The patient participants were diagnosed with prematurity, congenital heart disease, neurodevelopmental disorders, anxiety, cystic fibrosis, and other disorders. Patients and family members who appeared to be experiencing stress either by appearance as they looked tired, angry, sad, or exhibiting commonly stress-associated behaviors such as restlessness, lack of focus, or emotional outbursts were chosen. Some patients and family members though opted not to participate in the activity due to some reasons such as they don’t like to write, they don’t have the time to write and they are unable to concentrate because of their child’s condition. Meanwhile, the healthcare practitioner participants were pediatric cardiologists, pediatric residents, child development specialists, and pediatric nurses. (1)
The healthcare practitioners conducted the 3MMM activity at patient’s bedside and outpatient examination room. The practitioners often guided the expressive writing activity with more than one family member per patient. While leading the 3MMM activity using a standardized script, practitioners also wrote concurrently with patients or families. All participants followed the writing prompts indicated in the instructions. After writing, the healthcare practitioners invited their patient or their family members to share what they had written. Findings of the study yielded that the top stress symptoms that the participants experienced before the brief expressive writing activity were exhaustion, inability to get enough sleep, high levels of frustration, irritability, and a caffeine intake increase. However, after the 3MMM activity, there was a decrease in their stress level. This confirms that expressive writing is an effective way to help patients and families better cope with stress. Moreover, it was observed that there was more stress level improvement among those who had not previously used journaling. Eighty-eight percent of patients or family members said that the 3MMM activity was helpful, despite that only 35% of them had used writing or journaling for stress relief in the past. (1)
Reference:
- (1) Thoele DG, Gunalp C, Baran D, et al. Health care practitioners and families writing together: The Three Minute Mental Makeover. Perm J 2020;24:19.056. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/19.056
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