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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
British doctors prescribe "bibliotherapy" for the stressed-out and depressed.
Aug 8, 2000 | Most doctors don't prescribe fiction for patients who are ill, but that's exactly what will happen in Britain beginning in September, when doctors and librarians team up to launch a new program that will deliver a therapeutic course of novels to patients suffering from a range of ailments.
As an alternative to traditional medication, family doctors in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, will refer patients who are struggling through bouts of depression, stress and anxiety to a "bibliotherapist" at a local library. The bibliotherapist will then scan the library's database to create a customized course of books designed to assuage each patient's particular malady. The goal is to pair patients with books that will serve as an inspiration for them to get better -- or at least cheer them up. The pilot program is funded by the government, local health authorities and a libraries' charity.
Catherine Morris, a Kirklees librarian and the program's organizer, says the program isn't designed for people with severe psychiatric illness, but for those troubled by depression or mild anxiety.
"Working in the library, I meet people all the time who say that reading particular books has cheered them up," Morris says. "Once someone came in and said 'I really enjoyed this book because it was about somebody more miserable than I was.' The idea is that bibliotherapists will talk to people, find out what kind of things they normally like to read, why they are stressed or ill, and then prescribe them an individual list of books."
So where can you -- the average depressed, stressed-out, anxiety-ridden American -- find a good bibliotherapist in this country? Sorry, but you probably won't find one at all. Officials at the American Library Association (ALA) say that librarians in the United States aren't accustomed to handing out prescriptions for literary medicine.
"It's not something we're doing on this side of the pond," says Mary Jo Lynch, the director of ALA's Library and Research Center. "It's certainly not something that we're using in any of our committees or sections at ALA. Librarians here have never called themselves 'bibliotherapists.' We don't use that title. It isn't something that we feel we're qualified to do."
Lynch raises the inevitable question: Is your average librarian really qualified to dispense treatment for depression and anxiety -- even if the medication being prescribed is strictly literary? Lynch says the Brits are going out on a shaky limb. "This is a very litigious society," she points out. "If you hang out a shingle and claim that you can cure people, you're making yourself vulnerable (to lawsuits)."
Still, Lynch -- like all self-respecting librarians -- believes that great literature can have a genuinely curative effect on the reader, and though librarians in this country may not brand themselves "bibliotherapists," they do practice book-healing on a looser, less formal basis.
"We maintain lists of books that we think might help people in different situations," Lynch says. "The goal for librarians is to know this stuff in case someone comes in and wants it."
While the British program is a groundbreaker of sorts, the concept of bibliotherapy per se is nothing new. You can trace it way back to ancient Greece, when the words "Medicine for the Soul" were inscribed over the door to the Library at Thebes. And the Greeks, famous for their tragedies, really knew how to plot a story for maximum therapeutic impact.
"It goes back to Aristotle's idea that tragedy has a cathartic effect on the audience," say Brian Bremen, an associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin who teaches a course on the relationship between literature and healing. "The experience purges you and leaves you a healthier person."
