The Bilingual Written Exposure Therapy (WET) Study
Examines the expression of and healing from trauma in bilingual Japanese- and English-speaking adults.
Recruitment coming soon.
The WET Protocol
Written Exposure Therapy (WET) is a brief, evidence-based treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It typically involves five structured sessions where clients write in detail about their traumatic experience, focusing on thoughts and emotions connected to it. The process helps reduce avoidance, process traumatic memories, and lessen PTSD symptoms. WET is valued for being simple, time-efficient, and effective, making it an accessible treatment option for individuals who may not engage in longer or more intensive therapies.
The current project
This proposed study investigates how bilingual and multilingual individuals express and process trauma across their languages, focusing on the use of first language (Japanese), second language (English), and code-switching within the Written Exposure Therapy (WET) protocol.
Building on prior psycholinguistic evidence that emotions and memory vary by language, the research takes a within-person approach to examine how bilingual language choice influences trauma symptom expression and therapeutic outcomes.
By exploring how different languages shape the healing process, the study aims to provide the first systematic evidence on multilingual WET, with the broader goal of informing culturally sensitive and linguistically responsive mental health interventions for multilingual and multicultural populations.