BACKGROUND The proven efficacy of the therapeutic approach of writing therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) allows a broadening focus and an examination of therapeutic components as well as the written realisation of these on the word level. Prior content analyses showed that these primary data analyses provided valuable new findings allowing insights into the therapeutic process in addition to questionnaires.
METHODS Therapeutic texts from 51 patients were analysed using content analysis (Affective Dictionary Ulm). The aim of this work is to show differences in therapeutic components on a textual basis.
RESULTS There were differences in the frequency of use of emotions in the therapeutic components. In texts of trauma exposure, a significant increase of use of stressful word categories (fear, depression, and anxiousness) has been identified compared to biographical reconstruction texts. In texts of cognitive restructuring, the highest affective density is found in comparison to biographic reconstruction but also compared to trauma exposure, based on negative (depression, anxiousness, and fear) and positive (love, satisfaction, pleasure) affects equally. Patient characteristics (gender, education, age, partnership) had no influence on the expression of the affective density.
CONCLUSION Quantitative content analysis seems to be a promising approach in identifying and distinguishing components of writing therapy on the affective vocabulary level. The presented approach represents a possible extension of current practice and research.