Cognitive and emotional processing through writing among adolescents who experienced the death of a classmate

This study investigated how written emotional disclosure reflects the processes by which adolescents cope with a traumatic event they experienced collectively—the sudden death of a classmate. Twenty high school students wrote about their emotional reactions to the death on 3 consecutive days. The writings were coded using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and analyzed using a mixed-methods software (T-LAB). A measure of posttraumatic stress symptoms (Impact of Events Scale–Revised) obtained at baseline (14 days after the death) and 1 week and 4 months' postwriting was used to classify the students into four adjustment trajectories: Delayed Distress, Recovery, Stable-Negative, and Stable-Positive. Textual analysis revealed a progressive elaboration of the traumatic event across the 3 writing days, moving from a factual perspective to the processing of emotions to an integrated emotional and cognitive restructuring of the event. The nature of the writing differed across adjustment trajectories. Specifically, students in the Stable-Positive and Recovery trajectories made greater mention of the deceased classmate and reflected greater cognitive processing of the trauma. Students in the Stable-Negative and Delayed Distress trajectories used more self-references and negative emotion words and showed a greater degree of inhibition. The results provide preliminary clues to adjustment processes in adolescent bereavement.