Research: writing letters of gratitude shifts our attention from negative experiences

Gratitude reverses our priorities to help us appreciate the people and things we do. Many studies over the past two decades have found that people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed.

Much of the research on gratitude has been conducted with well-functioning people, so this begs the question: is gratitude beneficial for people who struggle with mental health concerns?

A study published in Psychotherapy Research asked this question by recruiting nearly 300 adult college students who were seeking mental health counselling at a university for issues related to depression and anxiety.

The researchers randomly assigned their study participants into three groups. All three groups received counselling services, but the first group also wrote one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks, whereas the second group was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences. The third group did not do any writing activity.

Participants in the gratitude group reported significantly better mental health four weeks and 12 weeks after their writing exercise ended. This suggests that practising gratitude is not only helpful for the general population but also for people accessing support for mental health concerns. The researchers made some suggestions for how practising gratitude benefits us psychologically.

The first notion was that writing letters of gratitude helps shift our attention away from negative experiences that we might be ruminating on. Secondly, most of the participants didn't send their gratitude letters - so they experienced the benefits regardless of whether they outwardly communicated their gratitude to others.

If you decide to try the gratitude letter writing, remember that the effects in this study weren't immediate but took some time, so it's important to be patient and persist with the practice.