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Lost in Translation: Bibliotherapy and Evidence-based Medicine

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Abstract

Evidence-based medicine’s (EBM) quantitative methodologies reflect medical science’s long-standing mistrust of the imprecision and subjectivity of ordinary descriptive language. However, EBM’s attempts to replace subjectivity with precise empirical methods are problematic when clinicians must negotiate between scientific medicine and patients’ experience. This problem is evident in the case of bibliotherapy (patient reading as treatment modality), a practice widespread despite its reliance on anecdotal evidence. While EBM purports to replace such flawed practice with reliable evidence-based methods, this essay argues that its aversion to subjective language prevents EBM from effectively evaluating bibliotherapy or making it amenable to clinical and research governance.

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Notes

  1. Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group, “Evidence-Based Medicine: A New Approach to Teaching the Practice of Medicine,” Journal of the American Medical Association 268 (1992): 2420–2425.

  2. D Sackett, W Rosenberg, JA Gray, RB Haynes, and WS Richardson, “Evidence-Based Medicine: What It Is and What It Isn’t?,” British Medical Journal 312 (1996): 71.

  3. Sackett et al., p 72.

  4. W Rosenberg and A Donald, “Evidence Based Medicine: An Approach to Clinical Problem Solving,” British Medical Journal 310 (1995): 1123.

  5. A Kleinman, Writing at the Margin: Discourse Between Anthropology and Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

  6. JZ Segal, “Contesting Death, Speaking of Dying,” Journal of Medical Humanities 21 (2000): 29.

  7. See L Silverberg, “Bibliotherapy: The Therapeutic Use of Didactic and Literary Texts in Treatment, Diagnosis, Prevention, and Training,” Journal of the American Osteopathic Association 103 (2003): 131–135. See also L Myracle, “Molding the Minds of the Young: The History of Bibliotherapy as Applied to Children and Adolescents,” The ALAN Review 22 (1995): 1–4.

  8. See G Rosen, “Remembering the 1978 and 1990 Task Forces on Self-Help Therapies,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 60 (2004): 111–113. See also R Riordan and L Wilson, “Bibliotherapy: Does It Work?,” Journal of Counseling and Development 67 (1989): 506–595.

  9. SJ Adams and N Pitre, “Who Uses Bibliotherapy and Why? A Survey From an Underserviced Area,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 45 (2000): 645–649.

  10. E Pomeroy, “Book Therapy in Veterans’ Hospitals,” in Bibliography Sourcebook, ed. R Rubin (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1978).

  11. JM Schneck, “Bibliography for Neuropsychiatric Patients: Report of Two Cases,” in Bibliographic Sourcebook, ed. R Rubin (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1978), p 45.

  12. WC Menninger, “Bibliotherapy,” in Bibliotherapy Sourcebook, ed R Rubin, ed. R Rubin (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1978), p. 20.

  13. Pomeroy, “Book Therapy,” p. 8.

  14. In the 1950s, after the development of effective polio vaccines and antibiotic therapies for tuberculosis, long institutional treatments became less common, and librarians left the sanitaria for public libraries, bringing their interests in bibliotherapy to lay audiences.

  15. Quoted in JA Pardeck and JT Pardeck, Bibliotherapy: A Clinical Approach for Helping Children (Langhorne PA: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1993), p. 3.

  16. R Rubin, Bibliographic Sourcebook (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1978).

  17. Menninger, “Bibliotherapy,” pp. 12–21.

  18. A Bryan, “Can There Be a Science of Bibliography?,” Library Journal 64 (1939): 74–77.

  19. JA Pardeck and JT Pardeck, Young People With Problems: A Guide to Bibliotherapy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984).

  20. R Rubin, Using Bibliotherapy: A Guide to Theory and Practice (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1978), p. 3.

  21. Riordan and Wilson, “Bibliotherapy,” p 507.

  22. L Warner, “The Myth of Bibliotherapy,” School Library Journal 10 (1980): 108.

  23. L Silverberg, “Bibliotherapy: The Therapeutic Use of Didactic and Literary Texts in Treatment, Diagnosis, Prevention, and Training.”

  24. See also Pardeck and Pardeck, Bibliotherapy: A Clinical Approach.

  25. See Warner, “The Myth of Bibliotherapy.”

  26. Sackett et al., “Evidence-Based Medicine,” p 72.

  27. P Cuijpers, B Tiemens, and G Willemse, “Minimal Contact Psychotherapy for Depression,” Cochrane Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Group Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2006), http://www.umkc.edu.lib (accessed 29 April 2006).

  28. S Bonnycastle, “Bibliotherapy in Action: A Reader’s Developing Responses to Two Stories About Obsessional Love,” Textual Studies in Canada 13/14 (2001): 1.

  29. J Ackerson, F Scogin, N McKendree-Smith, and RD Lyman, “Cognitive Bibliotherapy for Mild and Moderate Adolescent Depressive Symptomatology,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66 (1998): 686.

  30. Ibid, p 689.

  31. Ibid, p 686.

  32. N Frieswijk, N Steverink, BP Buunk, and J Slaets, “The Effectiveness of a Bibliotheraphy in Increasing the Self-Management Ability of Slightly to Moderately Frail Older People,” Patient Education and Counseling 61 (2005): 221.

  33. Ibid, pp. 223–224.

  34. Editors, “Reviews: Making Sense of an Often-Tangled Skein of Evidence,” Annals of Internal Medicine 142 (2005): 1019.

  35. R W Marrs, “A Meta-Analysis of Bibliotherapy Studies,” American Journal of Community Psychology 23 (1995): 862.

  36. TR Apodaca and WR Miller, “A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Bibliotherapy for Alcohol Problems,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 59 (2003): 295.

  37. RA Gould and GA Clum, “A Meta-Analysis of Self-Help Treatment Approaches,” Clinical Psychology Review 13 (1993): 169–186.

  38. Marrs, “A Meta-Analysis,” pp. 843–867.

  39. Ibid, p 848.

  40. F Scogin, J Bynum, and G Stephens, “Efficacy of Self-Administered Treatment Programs: Meta-Analytic Review,” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 21 (1990): 45.

  41. N McKendree-Smith, M Floyd, and FR Scrogin, “Self-Administered Treatments for Depression: A Review,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 59 (2003): 276.

  42. See E Mayo-Wilson and P Montgomery who cite some researchers’ identification of the Bible as a bibliotherapeutic text as an example of overly broad use of the term, “bibliotherapy” in their article, “Media-Based Behavioural and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Anxiety Disorders,” Cochrane Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Group Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2004), http://www.umkc.edu/lib (accessed 1 May 2006). When viewed from a literary perspective, however, it could be argued that scriptural texts are the oldest and most enduring genre of bibliotherapeutic literature.

  43. Marrs, “A Meta-Analysis,” p 844.

  44. Ibid, p. 864.

  45. Mayo-Wilson and Montgomery.

  46. J van Lankveld, “Bibliotherapy in the Treatment of Sexual Dysfuntions: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66 (1998): 702–708.

  47. See R Motten, “Using the Rule of Six and Traditional American Indian Learning Stories to Teach Choice Theory,” International Journal of Reality Therapy 23 (2003): 27–33. See also Z Shechtman, ”Bibliotherapy: An Indirect Approach to Treatment of Childhood Aggression,“ Child Psychiatry and Human Development 30 (1999): 39–53.

  48. See B Raingruber, “Using Poetry to Discover and Share Significant Meanings in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Nursing,” Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing 17 (2004): 13–20. See also J Hayes and K Amer, “Bibliography: Using Fiction to Help Children in Two Populations Discuss Feelings,” Pediatric Nursing 25 (1999): 91–95.

  49. N Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).

  50. See A Mitchell, D Dysart-Gale and S Wesner, “Postvention Group Support for Survivors of Suicide: A Communication-Based Analysis,” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 24 (2002): 91–106.

  51. N Holland, Five Readers Reading (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).

  52. See S Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); E Fromm, The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1951); and B Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Vintage Books, 1976).

  53. R McGillis, The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children’s Literature (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996).

  54. J Zipes, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization (New York: Routledge, 1991).

  55. See H McHaffie, Holding On? (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1994) and R Selzer, Imagine a Woman and Other Stories (New York: Random House, 1990).

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  1. General Studies Unit, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

    Deborah Dysart-Gale

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Correspondence to Deborah Dysart-Gale.

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Dysart-Gale, D. Lost in Translation: Bibliotherapy and Evidence-based Medicine. J Med Humanit 29, 33–43 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-007-9050-0

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