For young adults struggling with depression, relief might be found in a simple, low-cost practice: writing about who they used to be.
That's the hopeful finding from Cornell University researchers, who discovered that journaling about identities from childhood through early adulthood significantly reduced depression symptoms two months later in a study of 111 participants ages 18 to 29. The research, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, found that participants who reflected on their life story reported feeling less depressed, less "derailed"—a perceived mismatch between current and past identities—and more connected to their past selves compared to a control group that wrote about everyday activities like grocery shopping.
"Something about journaling based on your identities and connecting them through time—throughout your life story—appears to be psychologically beneficial," said Christopher Davis, a doctoral candidate in developmental psychology and the study's first author. "Connecting yourself back to yourself in such an explicit manner, and thinking about how you can take that forward, seems to be therapeutic."
The research arrives at a critical moment. Young adults are now the fastest-growing group among the 29 percent of U.S. adults who reported a depression diagnosis in 2023. For this age group, Davis and his team wanted to test whether strengthening a sense of identity continuity could ease symptoms and what they call "derailment"—that unsettling feeling of becoming a stranger to yourself.
Over two weeks, participants in the experimental group responded to five prompts asking about their motivations, passions, and goals at different life stages: early childhood, middle school, high school, college, and their desired future. They summarized each period with a single word—