The Guardian: Take two chapters, daily – how to prescribe fiction

April 12, 2016
By Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin

Take two chapters, daily – how to prescribe fiction
GPs are to going to give books to help teenagers with mental health issues. It’s a great idea – but not a new one. Here, two seasoned bibliotherapists discuss the power of novels-as-therapy

The news that GPs are offering books by the likes of Mark Haddon on prescription to young people with mental health issues is no surprise to us. We have been recommending – or “prescribing” – books as “cures” for common ailments from depression to heartbreak since 2008, when we started our bibliotherapy service. Our medicine draws not on pharmaceuticals, but on 2,000 years of great literature.

The concept of bibliotherapy is not new. Plato said that the arts are “not for mindless pleasure”, but an “aid to bringing our soul-circuit, when it has got out of tune, into order and harmony with itself”. Our practice focuses on great works of fiction that effect a sea-change in the mind of the reader. We use writers from Apuleius to Austen – by way of Haddon, Ali Smith and Meg Rosoff – to help people put their lives into perspective, to distract, soothe and rally. Sometimes, it’s the story that offers solace – a sense that we are not alone; sometimes, the rhythm of the prose. Recent studies have shown that reading a book can be more effective for reducing blood pressure than going for a walk or stroking the dog. Try reading Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet when your mind is too agitated to sleep, and you’ll see what we mean. Or, conversely, The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain when you’re in an energy slump – it’s better than caffeine. Fiction has also been shown to help us to relate to and understand others.

The Reading Well for Young People campaign is an excellent initiative, both as a way to approach mental health issues for adults and children – and for encouraging people to turn to literature as a salve. Unlike self-help books, novels are not written to educate or impart advice. Indeed, most novelists do not think too much about the reader at all when seized by the creative urge. They seek instead to understand and articulate something they have observed in life, and in doing so to get as close to the emotional truth as they can. It’s these truths we read for – the insights, observations, often in the form of minute details, on what it is like to be human, to interact with others, and to try to make sense of the world. Transported by the story, we see through other eyes, feel another set of feelings and experience different lives to our own. By reading, we are expanded, enriched and, perhaps, are better placed to understand ourselves.

Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin are the authors of The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies. Their new book: The Story Cure: Books to Keep Kids Happy, Healthy and Wise will be published this September.

Source: The Guardian