NCT01253486

Expressive Writing for Heart Healing

Use of Expressive Writing in the Cardiac Rehabilitation of Obese In-patients With Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD)

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 100 (actual)
• Sponsor: Istituto Auxologico Italiano · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 70 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This study will determine whether the psychological and physical benefits of expressive writing extend to obese in-patients with Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD)referred to cardiac rehabilitation

Detailed description

Expressive writing, for as little as 3-5 sessions of 20 minutes, has been found to improve both physical and psychological health based on health outcome measures such as number of doctor's visits and hospital days, blood pressure control, lung and immune function, pain, anxiety and depression. Given its simplicity and obvious advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness, expressive writing has great potential as a therapeutic tool or as a means of self-help, either alone or as an adjunct to traditional therapies. This modality has not been studied in obese patients with Ischemic Heart Disease.

Conditions

• Ischemic Heart Disease
• Obesity

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Disease-related Expressive writing	Participants in the disease-related expressive writing condition write about their feelings about cardiac disease four times, for at least 20 minutes each time, during a two week period.
BEHAVIORAL	Active Comparator: Traditional expressive writing	Participants in the traditional expressive writing condition write about their feelings about one or more stressful experiences they lived in the past, for at least 20 minutes each time, during a two week period
BEHAVIORAL	Sham Comparator: Neutral writing	Participants in the neutral writing condition write about the facts about cardiac disease, for at least 20 minutes each time, during a two week period

Timeline

• Start date: 2010-01-01
• Primary completion: 2012-09-01
• Completion: 2013-05-01
• First posted: 2010-12-03
• Last updated: 2021-02-12

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Italy