If you love curling up with a good book, you’re probably not surprised to learn that reading is good for your mental and physical health. But have you heard of bibliotherapy? We hadn’t either, but it’s reading for therapeutic effect.
According to a recent article in “The New Yorker”, it comes in all forms from working one-on-one with a therapist who recommends certain readings based on your emotional goals to literature courses in prisons to reading groups just for people suffering from dementia. And then there’s “affective bibliotherapy” which is all about the restorative power of reading fiction.
Bibliotherapists Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin explained to “The New Yorker” that the practice goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks, who inscribed above their library that it was a “healing place for the soul.”
They work with a network of other bibliotherapists from all around the world who they selected and trained. They say the most common problems people come to them with are the life-juncture transitions. Berthoud says like “being stuck in a rut in your career, feeling depressed in your relationship, or suffering bereavement.”
It makes sense since research has shown that regular readers have lower stress levels, higher self esteem and lower rates of depression than non-readers. Reading has been shown to get our brains into a “pleasurable trance-like state,” sort of like meditation.
