How writing improves mental health

Research shows expressive writing can battle anxiety, depression

Writing is helpful to good mental health and, therefore, may provide a simple solution to help combat the national teen and college student mental health crisis. It could even help heal entire communities as an exercise and movement.

I know this first-hand because expressive writing for me, books and other examples like this newsletter, is incredibly beneficial and healing from a mental health perspective, like taking long walks and counseling. The exercise doesn’t have to be that significant, like writing books, either, since research shows how expressive writing, even periodic journaling yields benefit.

For instance, I’ve watched EDHE class instructors, and instructors and professors in English and Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi successfully use writing assignments to help college first-year students process their transition and arrival into a new world that can bring anxiety and fears and upper class students better manage the social and academic challenges and opportunities. And I have talked with students about how this helped them. Some said it led them to counseling, others to realize they can handle the change and to realize they aren’t alone, while others said it helped them better vision what they want and how they can serve in the future.

I’ve also seen middle and high school teachers throughout the country use the same tactic effectively — there are countless stories of students helped by the expressive writing experience because learning about ones-self is powerful. That’s why when I speak at a school about mental health, and counselors and teachers ask what more they can do – my first response is always: Assign reflective writing to help students pause, look within, and process.

Imagine, in this teen mental health crisis, if every school used this technique throughout the academic year, and consider that it’s free, accessible for all students, and directly connects to an already-established curriculum in English and writing. The result: We’d get a head start on alleviating the teen mental health crisis plaguing the United States.

Writing has helped me process traumatic events in my life, including losing a child, divorce (and the joy of remarriage!), cancer, career changes and transitions, and more. It’s also helped me explore and learn greater vulnerability. The more I learn about myself, the more I appreciate what others may face, and the more focused I am on what’s possible in the future. That’s because writing not only helps us process trauma, writing helps us envision our path forward, a vital element of mental health progress and healing.

In fact, in reading over my new memoir A Little Crazy as it nears publication, I see how I spent many pages, spread across multiple chapters, discussing the benefits of writing about mental health – noting, at one point, how “normal” I felt writing about “my abnormality.”

Seriously – that’s a line I write in the book. “It occurs to me how normal I feel, engaged in a story about my abnormality.”

That’s one of the most accurate statements I have ever written or said about myself, and I’m sure I never could have expressed that verbally. Thus, writing was my key to introspection, resulting in my normalizing my self-view.

Imagine, if every student gained that perspective. We’d likely see a reduction in substance misuse, suicide, gun violence, with widespread increases in joy and productivity.

All thanks to writing.

That’s why we need more reflective, expressive storytelling as school curriculum.

We realized years ago that algebra in middle school is best for learning and professional development. It’s time to fully implement expressive writing-as-healing assignments from middle school into college, perhaps the most vital step in fostering change in this crisis.

And let’s not stop there. Why not create community writing and storytelling engagement opportunities involving churches, and senior citizens.

The research is clear: all benefit from expressive writing—and it doesn’t have to be a daily exercise or even monthly, since research also shows that writing at any level, notes on an iPhone while traveling, even, or jotted into a pad over coffee, can help us process and improve our feelings and perspective.

So, here’s to more writing, and improved mental health for all.