The effects of expressive writing intervention for Patients with cancer; An overview of systematic reviews

background and objectives; various individual and systematic reviews investigating theeffects of expressive writing intervention led to different results due to using heterogenoussamples and methodology. This overview aimed to evaluate the systematic reviews of effectof expressive writing intervention for improving health outcomes.search metod;searches wereconducted in google scholar, google, yahoo, and Cochrane databases of systematic reviewsfrom 1986 to October 2019.Findings; From citations we found 3 systematic reviews that met our inclusion criteria.Zachariae and oToole found only a significant moderating effect of social constraintssuggesting that participants experiencing low levels of emotional support may be likely tobenefit from EWI and oh and Kim in terms of physical outcomes found a significant smalleffect (0.26 on relieving cancer symtoms in subgroup analysis. But kupeli et al showed noclear difference in the effect of expressive writing on sleep, anxiety or deression. Also, theyshowed that studies had methodological shortcoming and evidence was generally of lowquality. Investigating the methodological quality of included systematic reviews in thisoverview using AMSTAR tool showed a moderate quality for all of them.Conclusion; Clinically Significant heterogeneity between original studies and systematicreviews especially in terms of methodology, samples, setting, outcomes, follow upassessment, mode of intervention, dosage variables and confounding variables may explainvarious results. Future rigorous individual studies and systematic reviews must be conductedto show it main effect.