Effects of expressive writing and use of cognitive words on meaning making and post-traumatic Growth

Zheng, Liyun; Lü, Qian; Gan, Yiqun

doi:10.1017/prp.2018.31

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The use of cognitive words in expressive writing facilitates the process of meaning construction, enabling individuals to understand stressful events and achieve PTG. Zheng et al ( 38 ) gave 52 adolescents a 20-min expressive writing task to write down traumatic events in detail. It was found that expressive writing and the use of causal and insightful words contributed to the generation of meaning in the writing process and increased levels of PTG.…”

Section: Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research Progress on Influencing Factors and Intervention Measures of Post-traumatic Growth in Breast Cancer Patients

Sun

Wang

et al. 2022

Front. Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Breast cancer is the highest incidence of female malignant tumor in the world, and it shows an increasing trend year by year. It poses a great threat to women's life and health and has become a public health issue of global concern. Paying attention to the psychological response of cancer patients is of definite value in helping patients cope with the disease, return to society, reshape an active and healthy life, and improve their quality of life with cancer. In recent years, researchers have increasingly focused on the positive changes experienced by cancer patients from the perspective of positive psychology, namely post-traumatic growth. It is of great significance to explore individual and social resources to help patients grow and improve their survival ability and quality of life by paying attention to the potential resources and positive forces in the process of patients' fighting against diseases. This paper summarizes the influencing factors and intervention measures of post-traumatic growth of breast cancer patients, providing ideas and reference for clinical medical staff to carry out relevant intervention.

show abstract

Section: Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research Progress on Influencing Factors and Intervention Measures of Post-traumatic Growth in Breast Cancer Patients

Sun

Wang

et al. 2022

Front. Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…53,54 In contrast, the use of freely generated childbirth narratives may not only have the advantage of being a more accessible data collection method, but also entails self-disclosure and narrative construction, which both have positive implications in the processing of traumatic events and facilitating psychological adaptation. [55][56][57][58]…”

Section: Results In the Context Of What Is Knownmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Women with Post-Delivery Posttraumatic Stress Disorder using Natural Language Processing of Personal Childbirth Narratives

Bartal

Jagodnik

Chan

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundMaternal mental disorders are considered a leading complication of childbirth and a common contributor to maternal death. In addition to undermining maternal welfare, untreated postpartum psychopathology can result in child emotional and physical neglect, and associated significant pediatric health costs. Some women may experience a traumatic childbirth and develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms following delivery (CB-PTSD). Although women are routinely screened for postpartum depression in the U.S., there is no recommended protocol to inform the identification of women who are likely to experience CB-PTSD. Advancements in computational methods of free text has shown promise in informing diagnosis of psychiatric conditions. Although the language in narratives of stressful events has been associated with post-trauma outcomes, whether the narratives of childbirth processed via machine learning can be useful for CB-PTSD screening is unknown.ObjectiveThis study examined the utility of written narrative accounts of personal childbirth experience for the identification of women with provisional CB-PTSD. To this end, we developed a model based on natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to identify CB-PTSD via classification of birth narratives.Study DesignA total of 1,127 eligible postpartum women who enrolled in a study survey during the COVID-19 era provided short written childbirth narrative accounts in which they were instructed to focus on the most distressing aspects of their childbirth experience. They also completed a PTSD symptom screen to determine provisional CB-PTSD. After exclusion criteria were applied, data from 995 participants was analyzed. An ML-based Sentence-Transformer NLP model was used to represent narratives as vectors that served as inputs for a neural network ML model developed in this study to identify participants with provisional CB-PTSD.ResultsThe ML model derived from NLP of childbirth narratives achieved good performance: AUC 0.75, F1-score 0.76, sensitivity 0.8, and specificity 0.70. Moreover, women with provisional CB-PTSD generated longer narratives (t-test results: t=2.30, p=0.02) and used more negative emotional expressions (Wilcoxon test: ‘sadness’: p=8.90e-04, W=31,017; ‘anger’: p=1.32e-02, W=35,005.50) and death-related words (Wilcoxon test: p=3.48e-05, W=34,538) in describing their childbirth experience than those with no CB-PTSD.ConclusionsThis study provides proof of concept that personal childbirth narrative accounts generated in the early postpartum period and analyzed via advanced computational methods can detect with relatively high accuracy women who are likely to endorse CB-PTSD and those at low risk. This suggests that birth narratives could be promising for informing low-cost, non-invasive tools for maternal mental health screening, and more research that utilizes ML to predict early signs of maternal psychiatric morbidity is warranted.

show abstract

“…The score for general cognitive processing language is theoretically indicative of the process of making meaning of one's story (Boals et al, 2011). When examining the use of cognitive processing words in trauma narratives, Zheng et al (2019) found that expressive writing was related to increases in cognitive processing words. Although higher scores within trauma narratives are thought to reflect an adaptive process, it is unknown what this means in relation to rescripted PTNMs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this study was uncontrolled and did not examine rescription language. Expressive writing that involves self-compassion has been found to lower negative affect, as well as to promote posttraumatic growth (Odou & Brinker, 2014; Zheng et al, 2019). Emotional expression related to traumatic experiences is thought to be therapeutic and lead to decreases in distress (Foa & Kozak, 1986; Stanton & Low, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Nightmare Rescription Lead to Meaningful Changes in Language Use? An Investigation within a Treatment Seeking Sample with Chronic Post-Trauma Nightmares

Paquet

Cogan

Davis

2022

Imagination, Cognition and Personality

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Given language's significant relationship to underlying psychological functioning, studying changes in language use regarding post-trauma nightmare (PTNM) content throughout a rescription-based treatment can offer insight into the nature of change in language associated with such treatments. LIWC2015 is an efficient tool that analyzes bodies of text for words that are theoretically representative of verbal and written expressions of underlying emotional and cognitive processes. LIWC2015 has not been extensively studied with PTNMs. The current study analyzed changes in language across cognitive and emotional domains using LIWC in a trauma-exposed treatment-seeking sample. Our analyses revealed significant changes in the frequency of words related to emotions and cognitive processing from the nightmare to rescription. In general, the rescripted imagery, relative to the nightmare, contained significantly fewer words pertaining to cognitive processing and negative emotions. This is the first known study to examine the change in language use, via word count, between nightmares and their rescripted versions. As language use is strongly associated with psychological health, these findings have clinical implications for providers and clients alike.

show abstract

Effects of expressive writing and use of cognitive words on meaning making and post-traumatic Growth

Cited by 18 publications

References 45 publications

Research Progress on Influencing Factors and Intervention Measures of Post-traumatic Growth in Breast Cancer Patients

Research Progress on Influencing Factors and Intervention Measures of Post-traumatic Growth in Breast Cancer Patients

Identifying Women with Post-Delivery Posttraumatic Stress Disorder using Natural Language Processing of Personal Childbirth Narratives

Does Nightmare Rescription Lead to Meaningful Changes in Language Use? An Investigation within a Treatment Seeking Sample with Chronic Post-Trauma Nightmares

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About