Reading isn’t just a fun pastime. It’s used by bibliotherapists to improve mental health.

By Eva Terry

Roughly half of U.S. adults say someone in their family has had a “severe mental health crisis,” according to a 2022 CNN and KFF poll.

In 2024, the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences reported on data showing nearly 1 in 5 adults have had an anxiety disorder in the past year.

To stay mentally healthy, medical professionals suggest going outside, reaching out to friends, doing consistent exercise and more. However, an alternative method to these suggestions is floating around the internet, and it claims it will keep the brain functioning as healthily as it can.

Reading is the alleged solution.

Duane Dougal, a professor of linguistics and computer science at Brigham Young University, called reading’s effect on the brain “psycholinguistics.”

“Reading is the consuming and processing of information through written media,” Dougal told the Deseret News. Different texts “elicit emotional responses based upon their content, form and the receiver’s state and experience.”

One particular therapist has been vocal in how using psycholinguistics with her patients has proven to be beneficial.

Bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud compared literature with other art forms, saying reading gives the brain more of an escape than listening to music, going to an art gallery or watching a movie.

She told the BBC, “With a film or TV show, you’re given the visuals whereas with a novel you’re inventing them yourself, so it’s actually much more of a powerful event, because you’re involved.”

What is ‘bibliotherapy’?

The American Library Association defined bibliotherapy as reading “books selected on the basis of content in a planned reading program designed to facilitate the recovery of patients suffering from mental illness or emotional disturbance.”

Bibliotherapists select books for their patients that have characters similar to them. As the character progresses through the plot, the reader can work through their own emotions cathartically.

Books’ complexities are a product of the human mind’s complexity. Anne Jamison, a literature professor at the University of Utah, told the Deseret News, “The effects of reading are often not what the basic content of a book might suggest.”

https://www.deseret.com/lifestyle/2024/03/23/reading-improves-mental-health-bibliotherapy/