Writing your way to well‐being: An IPA analysis of the therapeutic effects of creative writing on mental health and the processing of emotional difficulties

This IPA study analyses the effects of creative writing on the emotional well‐being of a group of nine people working in the creative industries. The group attended a series of four creative writing classes and, in addition, volunteered to undertake a programme of four, one‐a‐week, ‘Creative Writing for Wellbeing’ tasks, using a personal difficulty as a backdrop. Issues presented included bereavement, divorce, domestic violence, rape, body image, personal trust and social isolation. A psychologist was available for participants who experienced emotional difficulty during this programme. Likert scales, weekly reports and semi‐structured interviews were used to chart the emotional journey of participants, all of whom concluded that writing creatively had brought unexpected and significant benefits to their cognitive processing of emotional difficulty and had positively affected their mood and mental well‐being. This has potential implications for low‐cost and accessible mental health treatments.