Reading well: The books prescribed by mental health experts

Every Wednesday, Alex Johnson delves into a unique collection of titles

Cinderella starts a business and Sleeping Beauty’s savings grow while she sleeps in the book (Getty)

The theory that reading can help treat illness goes back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Today in the UK, one in 10 young people has a diagnosable mental health disorder and the Reading Agency has put together a range of book lists to support them as part of its Reading Well: Books on Prescription scheme.

Kite Spirit by Sita Brahmachari
House of Windows by Alexia Casale
Mind Your Head by Juno Dawson, Dr Olivia Hewitt, Gemma Correll
Quiet the Mind by Matthew Johnstone
Every Day by David Levithan
Blame My Brain: The Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed by Nicola Morgan
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
Stuff That Sucks: Accepting What You Can’t Change and Committing to What You Can by Ben Sedley
The Self-Esteem Team’s Guide to Sex, Drugs and WTFs!? by The Self-Esteem Team (foreword by Zoella)

The titles above are for general use for those aged 13 to 18, but the full list of 35 titles covers other categories including ADHD, anxiety, autism and Asperger syndrome, body image/eating disorders, bullying, confidence/self-esteem, depression, OCD, self-harm, stress and mood swings.

All titles have been selected by experts in their field. As well as self-helps, memoirs and graphic novels, there is also a range of fiction including The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

Though an ancient concept, the term “bibliotherapy” was invented by Samuel Crothers in 1916 in his article “The Literary Clinic” for the magazine Atlantic Monthly. Over the past 100 years it has become an officially recognised and popular treatment, especially in the US, using an ongoing process of identification, catharsis and insight.

Evidence from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence indicates that self-help reading can help people with common mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression.

Reading Well: Books on Prescription provides reading lists for adults with common mental health conditions, people with dementia and their carers, and people with long-term conditions and their carers, as well as young people.

Books can be recommended by GPs or other health professionals and of course anybody can also choose a book from their local library without a professional recommendation.

The programme reached 635,000 people in its first three years.

Although some people may regard bibliotherapy as a slightly quacky form of medicine, the scheme is endorsed by NHS England and appears to work best when used alongside conventional therapies rather than replacing them.

Ted Hughes said he wrote The Iron Man “as a blueprint imaginative strategy for dealing with a neurosis … It is a story intended to cure the mentally sick”. He added that he felt it was successful though hard to measure exactly.

Slightly less scientific, though still with many admirers, is the bibliotherapy service offered by The School of Life in London by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin.

They use fiction (and occasionally philosophy and poetry) to cope with daily life issues. Their recently published book The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies thus offers selections to deal with anything from addiction to coffee to zestlessness, including Robinson Crusoe as a cure for pessimism, and White Noise by Don DeLillo for those afflicted with a fear of death.

‘A Book of Book Lists’ by Alex Johnson, £7.99, British Library Publishing

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