Free writing: Evaluation of a preventive program with elementary school children

Eight-session free-writing workshops focusing on developing elementary schoolchildren's use of different describing words, reference to self, expression and clarification of feelings, and expression of stress responses were introduced to 324 fifth-grade children living on the northern border of Israel where the probability of war-related crisis is particularly high. The purpose of the study was to evaluate (a) the effectiveness of the workshop and (b) the applicability of free writing in an actual stressful event. Results indicated that the workshop group exhibited higher mean scores than the nonintervention control group on all behavior measures, both after the workshop and following a stressful event (shelling of the town). The theoretical background for free-writing conceptualization is given and the implications of the results are discussed in light of large-scale preventive intervention.