It is generally believed that when you share a traumatic experience with somebody, it sort of heals you mentally to some extent of the pain and anguish you harbor thereafter. But a recent study conducted in the US states that this assumption may not necessarily be correct. Instead the study reports that bottling up the feelings associated with the trauma is the best way to deal with it.

 

Roxane Cohen Silver, a UC Irvine psychologist, states that this finding has the potential to change the way institutions invest money and resources in treating people mentally who have undergone a collective trauma such as the 9/11 attack in US, school shootings, etc. In this study conducted on a nationally representative sample, Roxane Cohen Silver and her colleagues examined the relationship between instant expression after a traumatic experience and a person’s mental and physical well being after some time.  

 

For this study, the researchers queried participants after the USA’s September 9/11 attack and kept a tab on them for the following two years. They detected that those who had not voiced their feelings and emotions after the attack when provided a chance to do so through an anonymous Web-based survey had managed to cope with the trauma comparatively better. These people, it was found, reported fewer diagnosed physical and mental disorders. Researcher Roxane Cohen Silver said that their study report may crucially help in understanding the significance of ‘expression’ in the treatment process after a trauma.