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A postdeployment expressive writing intervention for military couples: A randomized controlled trial
Author(s) -
Baddeley Jenna L.,
Pennebaker James W.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of traumatic stress
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.259
H-Index - 134
eISSN - 1573-6598
pISSN - 0894-9867
DOI - 10.1002/jts.20679
Subject(s) - spouse , psychology , active duty , intervention (counseling) , randomized controlled trial , military personnel , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , psychiatry , medicine , surgery , sociology , anthropology , political science , law
The current study tested the effectiveness of a brief expressive writing intervention on the marital adjustment of 102 military couples recently reunited following a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Active duty soldiers and their spouses were randomly assigned to write about either their relationship or a nonemotional topic on 3 occasions on a single day. The resulting design included 4 couple‐level writing topic conditions: soldier‐expressive/spouse‐expressive, soldier‐expressive/spouse‐control, soldier‐control/spouse‐expressive, and soldier‐control/spouse‐control. Participants completed marital adjustment measures before writing, 1 month, and 6 months after writing. When soldiers, but not spouses, did expressive writing, couples increased in marital satisfaction over the next month, particularly if the soldier had had high combat exposure.