Bibliotherapy, or how reading heals
More and more therapists are "prescribing" personalized book lists to identify or alleviate mental health issues, reports the British website "Dazed." This form of treatment, called "bibliotherapy," is one that some would like to see integrated into traditional psychotherapeutic methods.
[This article is from issue 1802 of Courrier international , “Read to feel better”, on sale from May 15 at your newsagent and on our website .]
Whether it's recovering from a breakup or regaining hope by reading the memoir of a beloved figure, literature has been a refuge for centuries. Books offer the perfect dose of escapism needed to escape the challenges of everyday life—and bibliotherapy seeks to tap into the immense healing power of books.
Bibliotherapy, as the name suggests, is a therapy that uses books to help patients with mental health and psychological well-being. While books have been helping readers since the dawn of printing, the first occurrence of the term “bibliotherapy” [in the United States] appears in a satirical article published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1916 in which author Samuel McChord Crothers discusses this new therapy with his friend “Doctor Bagster.”
“A book can have stimulating or sedative properties, it can put you in a bad mood or knock you out. The important thing is that a book does something to you and that you
Courrier International
