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'Up to you': Self-help books, depression and the reconstruction of reading.
- Source :
- Media, Culture & Society; Mar2024, Vol. 46 Issue 2, p324-342, 19p
- Publication Year :
- 2024
-
Abstract
- Like other consumers of 'low-brow' genres, self-help readers elicit polarized views in the literature. While little research to date has focused specifically on self-help readers with a history of mental illness, existing commentary reveals a particular tension: on the one hand, clinical researchers report positive outcomes for depressed readers engaged in bibliotherapy programs using self-help books, similar or superior to medication or talk therapy; on the other, scholars of media and culture express misgivings about the quality of self-help texts and highlight the negative potential of therapeutic discourse for individual readers and audiences more generally. By asking what actual readers do with self-help books, however, my research suggests an altogether more complex interaction between readers and the books they choose and use – especially as they navigate experiences of mental illness. Leveraging a reader-response heuristic in which I interviewed a cohort of Australian readers, this paper details some of the ways in which habitual consumers of self-help books describe their own interpretive activities, problematizing previous research that either emphasizes or downplays the significant expertise of vernacular audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- BIBLIOTHERAPY
SELF-help materials
MENTAL illness
RESEARCH personnel
CONSUMERS
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 01634437
- Volume :
- 46
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Media, Culture & Society
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 175723607
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231198431