In this final post I want to explain why bibliotherapy means so much to me and why I am so interested in it. Mostly it is because bibliotherapy has meant so much and been extremely effective for two very important people in my life. To protect their privacy I will simply call them "Susan" and "Melissa." I want to share their bibliotherapy success stories.
Susan
Susan was diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder when she was in her mid 30s, she is continuing to fight and struggle through this mental illness still today. As her illness progressed various medications and treatments would work, but after a while each different type of treatment or medication seemed to wear off and the symptoms of depression would inevitably return. However, during these years of ups and downs one constant self-treatment that Susan often used was reading. Susan mostly used creative bibliotherapy (see post 1 for a definition). She would use fiction books as an escape from her pain. The books she read were an effective coping strategy that would keep her from slipping deeper into depression and often help stabilize her mood. Most likely Susan would say that her books were life savers for her, helping her cope with her illness and getting her through hard times.
However, Susan's bibliotherapy was self-directed. Although she has not yet tried it, Susan indicated that she would interested in learning more about clinical bibliotherapy with her psychologist and feels it could be even more beneficial to her, because of the successes she has had with her self-guided bibliotherapy.
Melissa
Melissa's story is similar to Susan's. She was also diagnosed with a mild form of depression, however Melissa was diagnosed at an earlier age, when she was in high school. Melissa still struggles with the illness, however Melissa is no longer using any formal treatment or medication to help control her disease. About 6 years ago Melissa and her counselor worked on coping strategies and together they determined that reading was an especially important escape for her. Melissa's reading of familiar and comforting books helped her stabilize her mood and keep her mind off negative thoughts. Melissa's comfort reading let her see hope through the characters and stories she read (because when engaging in bibliotherapy she would only choose positive books to read).
Today Melissa swears by bibliotherapy to self-treat her depression. And Melissa would tell you that reading books has many a time saved her life. Melissa learned enough from her counseling sessions to be able to choose appropriate books to treat her depression. Today Melissa swears by her self-directed bibliotherapy for when she has depressive episodes.
I share these two stories, although neither is formal bibliotherapy, because I feel that both of these individuals I know could have benefited from a formal bibliotherapy program. Neither of these people had heard about bibliotherapy until I mentioned it to them and they both feel that a formal program could have been or could still be helpful to them because they are both engaged in personally using books to heal themselves. People like Susan and Melissa are why I feel there is a great need for more formal bibliotherapy collaborations and programs between practitioners and public libraries. I wrote these posts to hopefully encourage librarians to think more about these posibilities.
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