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Haiku and Healing

2015; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0276237415569981

1541-4493

Kittredge Stephenson, David H. Rosen,

Child Therapy and Development

Haiku poetry was investigated in the context of the expressive writing paradigm to evaluate its potential benefits. Participants, 98 introductory psychology students at a large southwestern university, wrote for 20 min a day on 3 consecutive days and completed self-report measures of happiness, life satisfaction, spiritual meaning, creativity, physiological symptomatology, depression, anxiety, and health/illness orientation at baseline and 3-week follow-up. A series of analysis of covariance linear contrasts were used to examine differences between groups writing narrative about a neutral topic, haiku about a neutral topic, haiku about nature, or haiku about a negative life event. Writing in narrative about a neutral topic led to decreases in anxiety and depression. Participants writing haiku about nature or a negative life event reported increased creativity, and writing haiku about nature led to decreased illness orientation. The present findings suggest that narrative writing leads to decreases in anxiety and depression, while haiku writing increases creativity and sensitivity to topic. The value of haiku and the arts are discussed for the writing paradigm and beyond.