The Effect of the Emotional Expression Through Writing on Reducing the Fear and Anxiety in Adolescent Students Saved from Death Quake in East Azerbaijan

Abstract

Natural disasters such as earthquakes can have a destructive impact on the mental health and development of children and adolescents and may lead to the disruption of their development path. The effect of expressing feelings through writing on the physical and prognosis of chronic diseases has been investigated but so far its impact on trauma has not been studied in Iran. The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention for emotional expression through writing in reducing the fear of death and the anxiety in the adolescent’s survivors of the earthquake of August 2012 in East Azerbaijan. The present research was conducted in the form of a quasi-experimental design for 80 male and female adolescents diagnosed with the symptoms of anxiety and fear of death Living in villages in quake-hit city of Harris using the random sampling based on accessibility that were assigned into two experimental and control groups, respectively. The experimental attended with complete satisfaction in 3 sessions of writing in 3 consecutive days. Members of the control group received no intervention.  Research instruments were the DASS-21 and TEMPLER which were completed by the participants at a pre-test, post-test and follow-up. Then, the data were analyzed using analysis of covariance and independent t-test. The results showed that anxiety index significantly reduced after performing independent variable in the experimental group compared to the control group. However, this method was not effective in reducing the symptoms of fear of death and also, independent t-test results showed that gender does not make a significant difference on the effects of intervention in relation to both variables (Symptoms of anxiety and fear of death). Treatment of emotional expression through writing was effective on reducing anxiety of young survivors of natural disasters and this method can be a self-help and inexpensive and available method in both genders. However, it needs to be investigated further in reducing the fear of death needs.