News Brief

For people who don’t like writing more than lists, it may seem surprising to discover that writing helps cancer patients. Most accounts of journal-keeping are from cancer patients or those who are scribbling their way through a difficult life event.

Why not heart or diabetes patients?

One possibility is that cancer is a deadline disease. It makes the patient face the possibility that he or she may live no longer than weeks, months or years. Other diseases, which may take the same toll on the patient’s body, can move more slowly and less predictably.

Cancer, then, may be the hard-driving editor in the world of disease.

As every writer can tell you, it is the deadline that gets the words flowing.

Even healthy people might want to give journal writing a chance. Keeping a journal can be an interesting experience, one that provides you with insights—or even surprises—you wouldn’t find anywhere else except in therapy.

The New York Times, Well Blog, by Tara Parker-Pope

“This month, a medical journal confirms what many cancer patients intuitively know. Expressive writing, which involves writing down your deepest thoughts and feelings, may improve the quality of life for cancer patients, according to a new report in The Oncologist.

“Previous research conducted in controlled laboratory experiments has suggested that expressive writing helps physical and psychological well-being. However, the recent study was a real-world experiment, conducted in the waiting rooms of an oncology practice.

“Researchers from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., studied the effects of expressive writing on 71 adults with leukemia or lymphoma who journaled their thoughts while waiting for their regular oncology appointments. The patients were asked to write their thoughts in answer to the question: How has cancer changed you, and how do you feel about those changes?

“After the writing assignment, about half of the cancer patients said the exercise had changed their thinking about their illness, while 35 percent reported that writing changed the way they felt about their illness. Three weeks after the writing exercise, the effect had been maintained. Writing had the biggest impact on patients who were younger and recently diagnosed. While a change in the way a patient thinks or feels about a disease may not sound like much, the findings showed that the brief writing exercise led to improved quality of life.”

Source: The New York Times, February 25, 2008

Citation: The Oncologist, February 25, 2008. No link or specific citation information available.