With the increase of handled health care, which stresses cost-efficiency and brevity, mental health professionals have needed to challenge this burning question: How can they help clients obtain the best possible benefit from treatment in the quickest quantity of time?
Recent proof suggests that an appealing technique is to match mental therapy with additional activities that are not too taxing for clients but yield high outcomes.
In our own research study, we have actually zeroed in on one such activity: the practice of gratitude. Undoubtedly, numerous studies over the past decade have actually found that people who purposely count their true blessings tend to be happier and less depressed.
The issue is that most research studies on thankfulness have been performed with well-functioning individuals. Is thankfulness helpful for people who struggle with psychological health concerns? And, if so, how?
We set out to resolve these questions in a recent research study involving nearly 300 grownups, primarily university student who were seeking psychological health counseling at a university.
We recruited these participants right before they began their very first session of therapy, and, usually, they reported medically low levels of psychological health at the time. The majority of individuals looking for therapy services at this university in general fought with issues connected to anxiety and stress and anxiety.
We arbitrarily appointed our study individuals into three groups. All 3 groups got therapy services, the first group was also advised to write one letter of appreciation to another individual each week for three weeks, whereas the 2nd group was asked to compose about their deepest thoughts and sensations about negative experiences. The 3rd group did not do any writing activity.
What did we find?
Compared to the individuals who blogged about negative experiences or only received counseling, those who composed appreciation letters reported considerably better mental health 4 weeks and 12 weeks after their composing exercise ended. This recommends that appreciation writing can be advantageous not just for healthy, well-adjusted individuals, however likewise for those who battle with mental health issues. It appears, practicing gratitude on top of getting psychological therapy carries greater benefits than counseling alone, even when that gratitude practice is short.
Which’s not all. When we dug much deeper into our results, we found indications of how appreciation may actually work on our bodies and minds.
While not conclusive, here are 4 insights from our research study suggesting what might be behind appreciation’s mental benefits.
1. Gratitude unshackles us from poisonous feelings
Initially, by evaluating the words used by participants in each of the two writing groups, we were able to comprehend the mechanisms behind the mental health benefits of gratitude letter composing. We compared the portion of positive feeling words, negative emotion words, and “we” words (first-person plural words) that individuals used in their writing. Not remarkably, those in the thankfulness writing group utilized a higher percentage of positive emotion words and “we” words, and a lower percentage of negative feeling words, than those in the other writing group.
People who utilized more favorable emotion words and more “we” words in their thankfulness letters didn’t necessarily have much better psychological health later on.
It was just when individuals used less negative feeling words in their letters that they were considerably most likely to report much better psychological health. It was the lack of unfavorable emotion words– not the abundance of positive words– that described the psychological health space in between the gratitude composing group and the other writing group.
Maybe this recommends that gratitude letter composing produces better mental health by shifting one’s attention far from hazardous feelings, such as resentment and envy. When you blog about how grateful you are to others and how much other individuals have actually blessed your life, it might become significantly harder for you to ponder on your unfavorable experiences.
2. Appreciation assists even if you do not share it
We told individuals who were appointed to compose thankfulness letters that they weren’t needed to send their letters to their desired recipient. Only 23 percent of participants who wrote appreciation letters sent them. However those who didn’t send their letters delighted in the benefits of experiencing thankfulness nonetheless. (Because the variety of individuals who sent their letters was so little, it was difficult for us to identify whether this group’s psychological health was better than those who didn’t send their letter.).
This recommends that the psychological health benefits of composing gratitude letters are not entirely dependent on actually interacting that thankfulness to another person.
So if you’re thinking about writing a letter of gratitude to someone, but you’re uncertain whether you want that person to read the letter, we motivate you to compose it anyway. You can decide later whether to send it (and we believe it’s frequently an excellent idea to do so). The simple act of composing the letter can help you appreciate the people in your life and move your focus away from negative feelings and ideas.
3. Thankfulness’s advantages take some time.
It’s crucial to keep in mind that the mental health benefits of gratitude writing in our study did not emerge right away, but gradually accumulated gradually. Although the various groups in our study did not differ in mental health levels one week after the end of the composing activities, people in the gratitude group reported much better mental health than the others four weeks after the writing activities, and this distinction in psychological health became even larger 12 weeks after the writing activities.
These results are motivating since many other research studies suggest that the psychological health benefits of positive activities frequently decrease rather than increase with time afterward. We do not really know why this favorable snowball result occurred in our research study. Perhaps the gratitude letter writers discussed what they wrote in their letters with their counselors or with others. These discussions may have reinforced the psychological benefits derived from the gratitude composing itself.
For now, the bottom line is this: If you participate in an appreciation writing activity, do not be too stunned if you do not feel considerably much better right away after the writing. Be patient and keep in mind that the advantages of thankfulness might take some time to begin.
4. Appreciation has lasting impacts on the brain.
About three months after the psychiatric therapy sessions started, we took a few of the people who composed gratitude letters and compared them with those who didn’t do any writing. We wished to know if their brains were processing info in a different way.
We used an fMRI scanner to measure brain activity while people from each group did a “pay it forward” task. Because task, the people were routinely given a small amount of money by a nice person, called the “benefactor.” If they felt grateful, this benefactor only asked that they pass the cash on to somebody. Our participants then decided how much of the cash, if any, to hand down to a deserving cause (and we performed in truth contribute that money to a local charity).
We wished to distinguish contributions encouraged by appreciation from contributions driven by other motivations, like feelings of regret or obligation. So we asked the individuals to rate how grateful they felt towards the benefactor, and how much they wanted to help each charitable cause, along with how guilty they would feel if they didn’t help. We likewise gave them questionnaires to determine how grateful they are in their lives in general.
We found that throughout the participants, when people felt more grateful, their brain activity stood out from brain activity related to regret and the desire to assist a cause. More specifically, we found that when people who are typically more grateful provided more money to a cause, they showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area related to learning and decision making. This suggests that individuals who are more grateful are likewise more mindful to how they reveal thankfulness.
The majority of interestingly, when we compared those who wrote the appreciation letters with those who didn’t, the appreciation letter writers revealed greater activation in the median prefrontal cortex when they experienced gratitude in the fMRI scanner. This is striking as this impact was found three months after the letter composing began. This shows that simply revealing gratitude might have long lasting results on the brain. While not conclusive, this finding recommends that practicing gratitude may assist train the brain to be more sensitive to the experience of appreciation down the line, and this could contribute to improved psychological health over time.
These are simply the very first actions in what need to be a longer research journey, our research study so far not just recommends that writing thankfulness letters may be handy for individuals looking for therapy services but likewise discusses what’s behind appreciation’s mental advantages. At a time when numerous mental health experts are feeling crunched, we hope that this research study can point them– and their customers– towards a efficient and beneficial tool.
Despite whether you’re dealing with major psychological difficulties, if you have actually never ever composed a gratitude letter before, we motivate you to try it. Much of our energy and time is spent pursuing things we currently do not have. Gratitude reverses our priorities to help us value the people and things we do.