Reading and mental health

As I have published here recently a few posts about the articles that I have red, today I want to tell you why is it good to read at all. Reading a book saved my day more than once, improving my mood in such an unexpected way that I was actually fairly surprised.  

That’s why when I saw the title of the new episode of Sting Abbey’s podcast, I found it pretty interesting and I decided to share the information I heard with you :) 

As the title itself points out in the podcast analyses the impact that reading has on people’s mental health and the ways in which one can boost the other.  

During the broadcast Abbey is interviewing three people who have suffered from mental illness o anxiety. He also speaks to Doctor Peter Sharma who is a consultant psychiatrist at Birmingham Mental Health Foundation and who supported the creation of Reading Well groups.  

Each person the presenter is talking to describe their own story and the impact that the reading had on the illness. Marian Keyes, who has gone through clinical depression refers that during the illness she could read only Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham books as there was nothing that she could identify with. As she said she desperately needed to escape herself for a while - a desire that the novels have been realizing perfectly.  

Moreover, even if something went terribly wrong in the story, she knew that it will be resolved in satisfactory way. There was always a solution that she could not find in real life. This certainty was maintaining in her the sense of calm that she had lost because of the illness.  

In the case of Russel Kane, an English Comedian and the second speaker, books are a barrier that is still keeping the stress away from him. He has a routine to listen to an audiobook every day, in bed, before falling asleep. He connects this activity with his sense of self-esteem on the scene. He claims that for him reading is a kind of therapy that maintains his inner peace and balance.

 

The last speaker is doctor Peter Sharma who is working at Birmingham Mental Health Foundation. For a long time, he had the sense of not doing as much as he could for his patients so he started to look for the other ways for them to feel better. That’s how he came across reading. In his opinion, books have the power to change thinking or even life. As he said, reading increases the connection to the world in case of people with depression and also gives them a kind of activity to do, one which schedules the day.

Obviously, as we all know, activities like reading, yoga and jogging will not cure any mental disease, never. But anyway, they are worth trying as a support in this tough process of curing, don’t you think?