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The Black Dog Insitute is doing a study on how writing affects people’s mood:

Over the centuries, many people have been naturally drawn to writing about their life and their experiences, through journals, creative writing, and other forms of written expression.   Day to day life can be stressful as people strive for balance between family, friends and work.  We are interested in whether certain kinds of expressive writing can be helpful for people in managing their moods, stress levels and general health. The ‘Writing and Mood’ study is investigating whether particular ways of writing about our lives and our experiences can offer benefits for our moods, emotional and physical health.  We are also interested in whether people with certain personality styles find writing in certain ways to be more helpful than others.

I thought it was quite fortuitous that I found about this research the week I decided to start blogging in an attempt to work though my depression treatment. I’ve signed up for the study, and I’m looking forward to going through the exercises. It’ll probably help to do more structured writing tasks than me just blathering away about random stuff.

There was a pretty intense questionnaire that I had to do, which left me with some thought-fodder to work with later.  But it involved lots of thinking-about-myself and I think that’s enough for now.