JAI ON EARTH Discovering Our Planet

The emergence of managed health care, which prioritizes cost-effectiveness and conciseness, has forced mental health practitioners to address this pressing issue: How can they assist patients in getting the most out of therapy in the least amount of time?

According to recent research, adding extra activities to psychological counseling that are not too demanding for clients yet provide good outcomes is a viable strategy. We have focused on one such behavior in our own research: practicing thankfulness.

In fact, a number of studies conducted in the last 10 years have shown that those who actively count their blessings are generally happier and less melancholy.

The issue is that the majority of studies on thankfulness have been carried out on individuals who are functioning normally. Do those who experience mental health issues benefit from gratitude?

Recent studies have shown that including additional activities into psychological treatment that are not too taxing for clients but have positive results is a practical approach. In our own research, we have concentrated on one such behavior: expressing gratitude.

In reality, a number of studies over the past ten years have demonstrated that people who regularly list their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed.

The problem is that most research on thanksgiving has been done on healthy persons. Does thankfulness help those who struggle with mental health issues?

And if so, how?

We set out to answer these concerns in a recent study of roughly 300 individuals, most of whom were college students receiving mental health counseling at a university.

We recruited these participants just before their first therapy session, and on average, they reported clinically poor levels of mental health at the time.

The majority of persons seeking counseling services at this university suffered from despair and anxiety.

We randomly assigned our research participants to three groups.

Although all three groups got counseling services, the first group was also advised to write one letter of thankfulness to another person every week for three weeks, and the second group was requested to write about their most profound thoughts and feelings concerning unpleasant situations.

The third group did not complete any writing activities.

What did we find? Compared to those who wrote about unpleasant events or merely got therapy, those who wrote appreciation letters had considerably improved mental health four and twelve weeks after the writing exercise concluded.

This implies that gratitude writing can benefit not just healthy, well-adjusted people, but also those dealing with mental health issues. In fact, research appears that practicing thankfulness in addition to getting psychiatric treatment provides more advantages than counseling alone, even if the gratitude practice is brief.

And that is not all. When we went deeper into our findings, we discovered hints of how thankfulness may function on our thoughts and bodies. While not final, here are four findings from our research that show what may be driving gratitude’s psychological advantages.

Gratitude releases us from poisonous feelings.

First, by evaluating the language used by participants in each of the two writing groups, we were able to better understand the mechanisms behind thanksgiving letter writing’s psychological advantages. We examined the percentage of positive and negative emotion terms, as well as

Participants utilized “we” terms (first-person plurals) in their work. Not unexpectedly, the thankfulness writing group used more positive emotion words and “we” words and less negative emotion words than the other writing group.

Using more positive emotions and “we” phrases in gratitude letters does not necessarily lead to improved mental health. Only when persons used less negative emotion terms in their letters were they considerably more likely to report improved mental health. In fact, the absence of negative emotion words, rather than an abundance of good words, explained the mental health disparity between the thankfulness writing group and the other writing group.

Perhaps this shows that sending appreciation letters improves mental health by diverting one’s focus away from harmful feelings like bitterness and jealousy. When you write about how thankful you are to others and how much they have enriched your life, it may become much more difficult for you to reflect on your terrible experiences.