Journals and Mental Health

 If you have been here long enough, you have probably read how much keeping a journal helped with my depression. Those who do not know what I have written, just click on the link below for "depression" to see those articles.

The source for this post shows a different view, a slightly different view, Does Journalling Actually Improve Mental Health? 

I didn’t start keeping a journal as a conscious way of coping with stress, but it didn’t take long for me to figure out that, if I was in a bad mental state, writing everything out provided some relief. I now realize that that sense of unravelling, of pulling apart my feelings, is a form of therapeutic journalling. And while people have been chronicling their lives for thousands of years, journalling as a wellness practice has experienced a recent boom. As countries started locking down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people turned to journalling as a sort of therapy—a space to vent and lament over the challenges of living through unprecedented times. A representative of the California-based lifestyle brand ban.do told a reporter they saw a 37.5 percent increase in journal sales from the previous year in the first four months of the pandemic alone—a figure similar to those of other brands across the country, according to Vox.

Journalling can be a valuable tool, and it’s quickly become a very popular one. But if so many of us are working out our feelings in notebooks, shouldn’t we all be feeling a whole lot better?

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In her last days, Plath was on a wait list to receive in-patient psychiatric treatment. When her doctor had tried to have her admitted at several hospitals, he was told that all the beds were full. In the end, her writing couldn’t save her. She needed real, substantial medical care. A person alone with their journal can only do so much.

I do not think that I have not advocated medical care, if so, then I will say I have been misread. Writing is a help, not a complete cure. My PO visited yesterday, asked about my mental health and my blog. I do not think he understands how the two are intertwined. Just as is my Zoloft prescription.

sch 6/25