The purpose of this essay was to investigate whether reading or the discussion of reading literature can enhance the psychological well-being from a user-perspective. The essay used the theory of Hynes and Hynes-Berry´s (2012) two distinctions of bibliotherapy; interactive- and reading bibliotherapy, to investigate reading and the use of reading as an impact on mental health. By the use of a survey sent to facebookgroups that regularly engage in reading and literature, it was utilized to showcase the two distinctions of bibliotherapy. The free-text answers given by the informants were parted into five identified themes, which was categorized into escapism, relaxation - to prevent stress, another perspective, insight - to identify with the story and belongingness. A discussion was also made about library and information science, which was used to discuss the possible bibliotherapeutic impact libraries could have on their users. The essay was summarized into conclusions, the last part of the text, where the question formulation were answered using the themes that had structured the results, the diagrams and charts that were presented in the quantitative results, and the two distinctions that structured the analysis. The conclusion of this essay is that when people read or discuss literature it is done with a positive result for their well-being. The study has shown that the concept of reading to enhance one's psychological well-being is an individual experience and differs depending on the person in question and their physical or psychological state. This essay has also come to the conclusion that bibliotherapy is something that could have a positive impact on libraries and their users if it got introduced and implemented to their practice. Although this requires a close collaboration between librarians and mental health professionals to combine their knowledge and create the best possible outcome for the users. Library and information science is therefore relevant when bibliotherapy is applied to users because of the librarians knowledge in the field such as information literacy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-113893 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Reynolds, Alice, Wikmans, Emma |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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