A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study on Home-Based Expressive Writing Intervention for Community-Dwelling Japanese Older Adults Who Care About Their Forgetfulness

Abstract

Stress management activities that older adults can efficiently perform at home are needed. We therefore created a home-based expressive writing for older adults focusing on habituation and conducted a randomized controlled trial. Participants were randomly assigned to the expressive writing group ( n = 42) and the active control group ( n = 40). The expressive writing group wrote about stressful events for 15 to 30 minutes 3 times each day at home. The active control group wrote about what they bought the previous day on three different days. Twenty six participants were included in the final analysis. The results showed that rumination, a risk factor for depression, decreased in the active control group compared to the expressive writing group. Our findings suggest that older adults can efficiently perform writing sessions at home. Also, a task such as cognitive training, rather than writing about stressful events, decreased rumination in older adults concerned about their forgetfulness.