Written emotional disclosure and its effect on health(A review article)

emotional disclosure increases mental health, improves the immune system, and decreases physical problems. The aim of this study was to review the effects of written emotional disclosure on improving physical and mental health.

This review study was conducted in 2022. The Persian keywords "efshay-e hayajani-e neveshtari", "salamat-e jesmi", and " salamat-e ravani" and the English keywords "physical health", "mental health" and "written emotional disclosure" were searched in "Google scholar", "PubMed", "SID.ir" and "Science Direct" from 2010 to 2021. After review, 10 articles were selected for this study.

Results of selected studies showed that written emotional disclosure improved implicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem, body image, depression, secondary hyperalgesia, care burden, stress, negative emotions, anxiety, self-efficacy, parental impairment, and quality of life and reduction of disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis.

The results of the present study suggest that written emotional disclosure may be effective in correcting life review in the psychological system as a person reviews and examines his or her life. Therefore, written emotional disclosure can be considered by experts as one of the simple, effective, and inexpensive methods.