The effectiveness of the emotional disclosure intervention on declining stress and inhibition among psychosomatic patients

Abstract

Introduction: The present research aimed at decreasing the stress and inhibition due to discharge of effect with written structure in patients who suffer from psychosomatic symptoms. Material and Methods: After using the perceived stress questionnaire and defense mechanism questionnaire, eventually 43 patients who were suffering from psychosomatic disorder were selected among the patients who had referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran. They had obtained M>21 in perceived stress scale, and their repression mean scores were more than 11.5. This research was conducted based on a quasi-experimental design. Then, they were selected through available sampling and randomly assigned into two groups of experimental and control. After instruction on written emotional expression, the data were gathered and analyzed using T-test. Results: The analysis of data revealed that emotional expression significantly declined the perceived stress levels among subjects of in the experimental group in comparison to the control group (P<0.05). Furthermore, inhibition scores among the experimental group, compared to the control group, had significantly decreased after emotional expression contribution (P<0.05). Conclusion: These findings suggest that although emotional expression was very painful in the days which were written, it had positive effects on declining stress levels in the long-term. Also it made a decline in inhibition so that it helped the patients improve their health condition.

Keywords

• stress
• inhibition
• emotions
• psychosomatic