According to a 2022 CNN/KFF poll, nearly half of American adults say someone in their household has experienced a “serious mental health crisis.”
In 2024, St. Augustine's College of Health Sciences reported data showing that nearly one in five adults had an anxiety disorder in the past year.
To maintain your mental health, medical experts recommend things like getting outside, connecting with friends, and getting regular exercise. However, there are alternatives to these suggestions floating around the internet that claim to keep brain function as healthy as possible.
Reading is said to be the solution.
Duane Dougal, a professor of linguistics and computer science at Brigham Young University, called the effects of reading on the brain “psycholinguistics.”
“Reading is the consumption and processing of information through written media,” Dougal told the Deseret News. Different texts “elicit emotional responses based on their content, form, and recipient's state and experience.”
One therapist is vocal about how using psycholinguistics with patients has proven beneficial.
Bibliotherapist Ella Bertud compared literature to other art forms and said that reading provides more escape for the brain than listening to music, going to museums, or watching movies.
She told the BBC: “In movies and TV shows you're given visuals, but in a novel you're inventing the visuals yourself. So it's actually a more powerful event because you're a part of it.” .
What is “Bibliotherapy”?
The American Library Association has defined bibliotherapy as reading “books selected based on the content of a reading program designed to promote recovery in patients suffering from mental or emotional disorders.”
Bibliotherapists choose books for their patients that feature characters similar to themselves. As the characters progress through the plot, readers are able to work through their emotions in a cathartic way.
The complexity of books is a product of the complexity of the human mind. Anne Jamison, a literature professor at the University of Utah, told the Deseret News that “the effects of reading are often different from what the basic content of the book suggests.”
“Books about good and happy people create good and happy readers, or books about vile deeds and tragic events damage mental health, or reading about people 'just like us.' This does not necessarily mean that we necessarily gain a sense of camaraderie or that reading about the 'other' (although all of these effects can occur), or that we become self-centered. ,” she said.
A study published in the American Psychological Association reported a correlation between bibliotherapy and fewer depressive episodes.
Berthoud has been in the bibliotherapy business for over 10 years. Describing what a bibliotherapy session is like, she writes: We prescribe books that will open new perspectives, shed light on your life, and re-enchant the world. ”
Reading helps “the whole of being human”
Jason Carr, a scholar of 17th century literature at Brigham Young University, has made a career out of reading.
But in addition to reading for work, Carr told the Deseret News that his mental health benefits greatly from reading text “without any real obligations or schedules.” For Carr, non-compulsory, pleasurable reading comes in the form of contemporary poetry.
Furthermore, he added: “Novels are a rare luxury. Starting something feels like going on vacation.”
According to Healthcare magazine, being empathetic and involved with others improves your mental health. Because books are known to teach readers empathy, Emanuele Castano, a social psychologist at the University of Trento, published a study in the journal Science that investigated whether certain genres best teach empathy.
The researchers assigned participants specific excerpts from three genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and literary fiction. A separate control group was not assigned anything. After completing the excerpt, each participant took a test assessing their ability to empathize.
Similar “not significant” results were found for nonfiction, genre fiction, and not reading at all. However, “scores were significantly higher in the literary novel condition.”
Castano defined literary fiction as a text that “removes the reader's familiarity.” He compared it to romance and other genres written for entertainment, and said that literary fiction “engages the reader creatively as a writer.” Famous examples of literary fiction include books such as Of Mice and Men and The Great Gatsby.
Jamison said such studies “make intuitive sense to me.”
“Although reading literature is not thought to directly help secure more resources, humans continue to invest time and effort into reading literature, which has other kinds of benefits. “It suggests that,” she said.
Carr added that difficult and complex reading has its own mental health benefits. Additionally, the theological reading “helped give me a better framework to approach life and my relationships with other people,” he said.
For Carr, reading difficult books provides a tool “to grapple with the whole task of being human.”
How to choose books to improve your mental health
Finding books that reduce stress and increase feelings of empathy will improve your mental health.
Duane told the Deseret News how reading affects his mood and emotions “in both good and bad ways.” He explained that a consistent reading experience rooted in “real-world learning and exploration” provides a consistently positive experience.
Dougal defined empathy as “a function of experience” and added that reading is an effective way to understand each other better.
“Shared or common experiences, especially grounded in reality, are what enable connection, emotional bonding, and understanding,” he says.
Anything that increases your ability to empathize, such as complex books, contemporary poetry, or religious texts, will strengthen your connections with other people. Connecting with others correlates with improved mental well-being.
