"Effectiveness of the Expressive Writing on the Somatization and Psychological Health of the Migrants: a Longitudinal Study"

Emigration is a global phenomenon with a significant impact in both, host countries and especially on people who decide to migrate. Italy seems to be a chosen destination for migrants, mainly due to its geographical position, as one of the European Union's border countries. Italy is mentioned as the fifth European country in Europe about the number of migrants. Currently, there are 5 million immigrants in Italy. Recent migratory flows in Italy have changed the cultural background of the main communities residing in the country. However, several studies have pointed out that the migration phenomenon is not a comfortable linear process, on the contrary, there are difficulties related to migratory traveling and the way it is carried out. Among others, the traveling experience could leave relevant marks on a psychological level. Recent studies underlie the effect of migration on the development of psychological diseases, on the loss of hope for the future that it affected the life expectancy causing insecurity, isolation, and poorness, and producing modification on the possible existing symptomatology. Moreover, the discrimination and disorientation that migrants experience while traveling and in host countries seem to have a relationship with anxiety symptoms.

Therefore, many investigations applied psychological intervention to treat the described symptomatology. The literature highlights the importance of the treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, narrative exposure therapy, dynamic therapy, combined psychological treatments, and combined psychological with pharmacological treatments. Of the mentioned treatments, the narrative exposure treatment seems to be the less applied intervention, a meta-analysis suggested a fairly effective application of NET on populations with trauma, however, this result must be taken with caution. The NET is a trauma-focused therapy, based on trauma expositions in an autobiographical context. This treatment provides both verbal and non-verbal application, as the expressive writing-EW. Additionally, Pennebaker considered that expressive writing referring to the own traumatic events with emotional descriptions could be of help in the resolution of the own life narrations and the insert of own memories in life history. The expressive writing technique applies to the own serious traumatic events, from 3 to 5 consecutive days, for 15 minutes daily. This technique is more structured compare to NET which can be both written and oral and doesn't necessarily provide a brief exposition. The expressive writing is applied in a more extended context of trauma, violence, war, natural catastrophe, cancer, and torture. Currently in literature, there not seem to be any authoritative studies that have applied the expressive writing technique to the trauma of the migratory journey. The present investigation allows extending the acknowledgment of this treatment applied to a population of adult migrants submitted to forced migration.

The aim of this study was to provide evidence of the effectiveness of expressive writing on mental and physical health in migrants considering the mediation role of the hope for the future. The hypothesis was that migrants who performed an expressive writing treatment will show a decrease in symptomatology in association with a greater sense of hope for the future.

The study involved three different samples: experimental, neutral, and control group. The three samples were composed through a randomized controlled trial placing 22 participants for each sample. The random allocation of participants within the three samples was blindly performed.

The non-profit association "Medihospes" located in Rome provided the migrant participants. Each participant was invited to read and accept the study by completing and signing the informed consent form. The inclusion criteria were age >18 years and the refugees' or asylum seekers' status. The exclusion criteria were psychiatric or neurologic diagnosis and drug abuse.