Bibliotherapy — Healing Through Reading
Today, I’m going to share with you bibliotherapy, which can be defined as healing through reading, and is comparable to individual psychotherapy(Gregory et al, 2004, as cited in Knaus, EDD, 2012). The best books are centered around a topic such as depression (or other mental health condition) and are written by doctoral-level mental health specialists (Knaus,EDD, 2012). This wonderful definition came from a self-help book on depression called The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression.
I have been reading books on my various mental health conditions since 2010. I have also had 10+ years of psychotherapy and medication management. At first, I did psychotherapy, medication management, and bibliotherapy. In 2020 I ended psychotherapy after coming across multiple unethical providers in one summer. I also realized that psychotherapy was not preventing my treatment-resistant depressions, nor helping me get out of them.
Bibliotherapy helps level the playing field between you and your mental healthcare providers. It provides a sense of independence and resiliency. I used to be very dependent on my mental health care providers to understand how to deal with my symptoms. I think some of them saw me as a “cash cow” because of the number of mental health conditions I have, and my childhood trauma spanning 23 years. I am clearly a complex case. I have found that mental health providers can be very caring and considerate when you are a well-behaved victim, but they can also be very judgmental if you eventually turn into a survivor and have unusual values or behaviors. They will try to control and change you if they don’t like what they see. Bibliotherapy can make you less vulnerable to controlling-not-in-your-best-interest mental health providers because books are not committed to misunderstanding you - like some mental health providers are. Instead, books are written by experts, so you tend to get the best advice. Books don’t betray your trust, instead, they teach you new information or new ways of thinking.
In the summer of 2021, one of my diagnoses changed from treatment-resistant unipolar depression to treatment-resistant bipolar II. One thing that was a signal that this was the right move was the fact that every time my symptoms flared up, I was flipping through the medication section of Bipolar for Dummies instead of Depression for Dummies. Another green flag was that a drug called Seroquel was helping with my symptoms when my antidepressant wasn’t. Seroquel is one of the few drugs approved by the FDA to treat bipolar depression. It is an atypical antipsychotic. It started to make sense when I read in The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide that if you are a woman, you are more likely to be misdiagnosed — and to have treatment-resistant depressions (Miklowitz, 2019). That explained why I had to resort to Ketamine Infusion Therapy in February 2021, a breakthrough treatment for treatment-resistant depression (unipolar or bipolar).
I will write an article on Ketamine Infusion Therapy for those who are interested. In addition, I am creating a reading list for people with mental health conditions and their caregivers. This is for anyone really. It will help people who cannot afford therapy, people who don’t get along with therapists, and as a supplement to traditional individual or group therapy. Follow me for more mental health tips.
