Poetry Therapy, Journaling, and Mindfulness

An Integrative Approach to Treating Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

This retrospective case study presents the course of a 16-month treatment of an adult female client diagnosed with severe anxiety. The treatment protocol incorporated poetry therapy, journal therapy, training in mindfulness meditation techniques, and cognitive therapy. Using the Beck Anxiety Inventory for scaling, the client reduced her subjective experience of anxiety symptoms from the baseline score of 34 to 9 after 15 months and to a score of 4 at the end of treatment. The author’s university Institutional Review Board approved the study and the client released the content of her journals for use in this article. Excerpts from her journal entries highlight the course of her movement from severe anxiety to remission.