Bibliotherapy : a mental health approach with institutionalized elderly people

Bibliotherapy is an innovative therapeutic technique that uses reading as a helping process for dealing with stress. It has been proposed as a mental health approach for individuals facing social, psychological or developmental problems. As reading tends to be a non-threatening method of sharing problems, a bibliotherapy group was implemented for 12 weeks with eight alert elderly people who had difficulties coping with their current life situation in a long-term care institution. The effectiveness of a bibliotherapeutic approach with this population is evaluated and implications for social work policy, practice and research are discussed