A postdeployment expressive writing intervention for military couples: A randomized controlled trial

✍ Scribed by Jenna L. Baddeley; James W. Pennebaker

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 118 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-9867
• DOI: 10.1002/jts.20679

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The current study tested the effectiveness of a brief expressive writing intervention on the marital adjustment of 102 military couples recently reunited following a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Active duty soldiers and their spouses were randomly assigned to write about either their relationship or a nonemotional topic on 3 occasions on a single day. The resulting design included 4 couple‐level writing topic conditions: soldier‐expressive/spouse‐expressive, soldier‐expressive/spouse‐control, soldier‐control/spouse‐expressive, and soldier‐control/spouse‐control. Participants completed marital adjustment measures before writing, 1 month, and 6 months after writing. When soldiers, but not spouses, did expressive writing, couples increased in marital satisfaction over the next month, particularly if the soldier had had high combat exposure.