Positive thinking

Sara Haslam, The Open University ; Edmund King, The Open University , and Siobhan Campbell, The Open University   Bibliotherapy – the idea that reading can have a beneficial effect on mental health – has undergone a resurgence . There is mounting clinical evidence that reading can, for example, help people overcome loneliness and social exclusion. One scheme in Coventry allows health professionals to prescribe books to their patients from a list drawn up by mental health experts. Even as public library services across Britain are cut back, the healing potential of books is increasingly recognised . The idea of the healing book has a long history. Key concepts were forged in the crucible of World War I, as nurses, doctors and volunteer librarians grappled with treating soldiers’ minds as well as bodies. The word “bibliotherapy” itself was coined in 1914, by American author and minister Samuel McChord Crothers . Helen Mary Gaskell (1853-1940), a pioneer of “literar...

Joan Cook, Yale University The term demoralization was originally coined in the 1970s by a psychiatrist who was seeing patients that didn’t quite meet full criteria for major depression. Nonetheless, they were suffering – in a shared state of emotional distress and sense of incompetence. For many Americans, we are experiencing this now in the wake of the Oct. 1 massacre in Las Vegas, one of the worst mass shootings in our nation’s history. These horrific events break our hearts and, some days, come close to breaking our spirits. We feel discouragement, confusion and uncertainty mixed with collective impotence. As a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Yale School of Medicine, I’m concerned about our collective mental health. I know that the effects of these tragedies affect us all, at least in some small or significant way. I also believe that there are some steps to take to help us heal. Effects of demoralization Numerous studies have shown the ...

By Jason Marsh One veteran haunted by the memory of men he couldn’t save, another by the men he has tortured. A child shuttled between five foster families in his first 22 months, now prone to slap himself in the face. Somehow their stories add up to a deeply hopeful new documentary, Free the Mind. The film tracks two very vulnerable and very different groups: veterans enrolled in a class to help them deal with their painful memories of war, and a class of preschoolers, some of whom are suffering from psychological or developmental disorders. It zeroes in on two of the veterans, Rich and Steve. Neither has been able to re-adjust to civilian life after returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan; both show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): intense mood swings, trouble sleeping, flashbacks to some of the horrors they witnessed—or caused—during their service. Rich’s post-war volatility cost him his marriage; Steve’s invasive memories distract him from ...