The first book on the German market that explains in an understandable and scientifically grounded way how and why writing helps. It is suitable for professionals as well as for laypeople, for writers as well as for doctors, therapists, educators, counselors, and anyone who wants to know. Well-structured, clear, and comprehensible, poetry therapist and physician Silke Heimes explains the factors involved in writing and how it unfolds its healing effects. Writing as therapy, for prevention, out of curiosity, for the sake of knowledge, and because it brings joy and makes life palpable in all its facets. If a medication were as inexpensive and easy to produce, as effective and low in side effects, as flexible and universally applicable as writing, the pharmaceutical industry would rejoice. And so do we, those of us who write to stay healthy.