Program Goals
The School-Based Expressive Writing Intervention was a preventative intervention targeting at-risk, seventh-grade students at an urban public school. The overall goal of the intervention was to use expressive writing as a means to reduce aggressive behaviors and improve emotion regulation.
Target Population
The intervention was implemented in an urban public school system (comprising three schools) that was predominately African American, and whose students typically lived in high-crime, impoverished neighborhoods.
Program Components
The intervention was offered during fifth period by project staff. The intervention included either a standard expressive- writing condition or an enhanced expressive-writing condition. The enhanced condition was developed to be culturally relevant and engaging to the youth.
In the standard expressive-writing condition (a total of eight sessions), students wrote for up to 20 minutes per session. They were asked to write about their thoughts and feelings related to violence they had seen or experienced. Project staff instructed students not to worry about spelling or grammar; instead, they were asked to focus on and write about their deepest feelings. Students who had not experienced violence were asked to write about something that was bothering them.
Similar to the standard condition (also a total of eight sessions), students in the enhanced expressive-writing condition wrote for up to 20 minutes per session. However, students in the enhanced condition were given the option to write stories, skits, songs, or poetry about violence rather than (or in addition to) a simple narrative account of their feelings toward violence. In four of the eight sessions, students were also given the opportunity to share their work with the classroom. Students were also instructed not to worry about spelling or grammar, but to focus on relating their deepest feelings.
In both conditions, the project staff read aloud samples to the students to ensure they understood the instructions. Students were told that only the project staff would see their writings, unless the writings indicated that the students were being harmed, or were harming others or themselves. In that case, these writings would be reported to the authorities to ensure necessary help was provided. At the end of each writing session, project staff collected the student writings.
Program Theory
Overall, it is believed that expressive writing improves an individual’s psychological and behavioral response to stressors because it facilitates emotion regulation. By encouraging participants to write about stressful experiences and their associated emotions, individuals can learn to regulate their emotions by directing their attention to different aspects of the experience, while also developing alternative ways to respond (Kliewer 2011).
