RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Fiction-reading for good or ill: eating disorders, interpretation and the case for creative bibliotherapy research
JF Medical Humanities
JO J Med Humanit
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP medhum-2017-011375
DO 10.1136/medhum-2017-011375
A1 Emily T Troscianko
YR 2018
UL http://mh.bmj.com/content/early/2018/04/21/medhum-2017-011375.abstract
AB Compared with self-help bibliotherapy, little is known about the efficacy of creative bibliotherapy or the mechanisms of its possible efficacy for eating disorders or any other mental health condition. It is clear, however, that fiction is widely used informally as a therapeutic or antitherapeutic tool and that it has considerable potential in both directions, with a possibly significant distinction between the effects of reading fiction about eating disorders (which may—contrary to theoretical predictions—be broadly negative in effect) or one’s preferred genre of other fiction (which may be broadly positive). Research on creative bibliotherapy, especially systematic experimental research, is lacking and requires a medical humanities approach, drawing on knowledge and methods from psychology and cognitive literary studies as well as clinical disciplines to expand our understanding of how the dynamic processes of interpretation mediate between textual structures and characteristics of mental health and illness.