Bibliotherapy

Bibliotherapy
Intervention
MeSH	D001638
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Bibliotherapy is an expressive therapy that involves the reading of specific texts with the purpose of healing. It uses an individual's relationship to the content of books and poetry and other written words as therapy. Bibliotherapy is often combined with writing therapy. It has been shown to be effective in the treatment of depression. These results have been shown to be long-lasting.

Bibliotherapy is an old concept in library science. According to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, in his monumental work Bibliotheca historica, there was a phrase above the entrance to the royal chamber where books were stored by King Ramses II of Egypt. Considered to be the oldest known library motto in the world, ψγxhσ Iatpeion, is translated: "the house of healing for the soul".Galen, the extraordinary philosopher and physician to Marcus Aurelius of Rome, maintained a medical library in the first century A.D., used not only by himself but by the staff of the Sanctuary Asclepion, a Roman spa famous for its therapeutic waters and considered to be one of the first hospital centers in the world. As far back as 1272, the Koran was prescribed reading in the Al-Mansur Hospital in Cairo as medical treatment.

In the early nineteenth century, Benjamin Rush favored the use of literature in hospitals for both the "amusement and instruction of patients". By the middle of the century, Minson Galt II wrote on the uses of bibliotherapy in mental institutions, and by 1900 libraries were an important part of European psychiatric institutions.

After the term bibliotherapy was coined by Samuel Crothers in an August 1916 Atlantic Monthly article, it eventually found its way into the medical lexicon. By the 1920s, there were training programs in bibliotherapy. One of the first to offer such training was the School of Library Science at Western Reserve University followed by a program at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine. Hospital librarians were at the forefront of bibliotherapy techniques. E. Kathleen Jones, the editor of the book series Hospital Libraries, was the library administrator for the McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. This influential work was first published in 1923, and then updated in 1939, and then 1953. Pioneer librarian Sadie Peterson Delaney used bibliotherapy in her work at the VA Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama from 1924 to her death in 1958. Elizabeth Pomeroy, director of the Veterans Administration Library Service, published the results of her research in 1937 on the efficacy of bibliotherapy at VA hospitals. The United Kingdom, beginning in the 1930s, also began to show growth in the use in of reading therapy in hospital libraries. Charles Hagberg-Wright, librarian of the London Library, speaking at the 1930 British Empire Red Cross Conference, spoke about the importance of bibliotherapy as part of "curative medicine" in hospitals. In addition, reports from the 1930 Public Health Conference about bibliotherapy were included in the British journal Lancet.

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