Writing improves wound healing

Writing about traumatic events has been found to have beneficial effects on the speed of wound healing.

These are the findings presented on Thursday 4 September 2003, by Suzanne Scott and colleagues from the Unit of Psychology, King’s College London at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Health Psychology Annual conference, held at Staffordshire University.

Research by psychologists has previously found that disclosure of traumatic experiences has positive health consequences by improving the performance of the immune system. In this study, half the participants were instructed to write on three consecutive days about a recent traumatic event and half, acting as a control group, wrote about time management.

At the beginning of the study both groups received a small skin puncture on their upper arm. The results showed that the participants who wrote about the traumatic events had significantly smaller wounds 14 days after the puncture.

They also found that levels of stress and psychological distress were associated with delayed wound healing.

Suzanne Scott said: “These findings have implications for the development of relatively brief and easy interventions that could have beneficial effects on wound healing.”