Hello friends, for the Greeks libraries were spaces that healed the soul. Literature and poetry can undoubtedly be a therapeutic tool to overcome a depression, because a book is more than a refuge. This scenario of letters and suggestive worlds is a discovery, a channel capable of awakening us, allowing us to confront, discover and even be reborn with greater strengths.

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Literature by itself and exclusively will not make a person overcome a depression. This is an aspect that should be made clear from the beginning. These types of disorders, as we already know, always require a multidisciplinary approach. There, where adequate therapy, counseling, medication, a balanced diet and a good lifestyle stand out as those ideal approaches to generate progress and improvement.

"I have sought tranquility everywhere, and have only found it sitting in a secluded corner, with a book in my hands."

-Thomas De Kempis-

Now, the ancient Greeks were not wrong to see healing tools in books. This was also discovered in several British hospitals during the First World War. Many soldiers suffering from traumatic disorders found a balm more than comforting when doctors and nurses put at their disposal a library specially selected for them.

When our interior is broken literature and poetry can rise as valuable agents of reconstruction, as allies for change. They are places that urge us to heal, to find calm when the depressive mind follows the rhythm of chaos. Books are pills for tranquility and catalysts of well-being.

Literature and poetry can you really help us overcome a depression?

Matt Haig is a British writer who achieved success through a book with the most explicit title: Reasons to continue living. In it he narrates in a stark manner what it meant to go through several years with depression. Far from being a self-help book, what the author wants is to make a simple aspect clear. Each person must be able to find their own strategy, their vital reason to move away from the precipice, their motivation to be reborn again, their key to close the door to depression. His, were the books. And specifically the fiction narrative.

Matt Haig reaches the same conclusion as many psychologists and psychiatrists. Although the latter go a little further. In addition to fiction books, poetry also stands as an exceptional therapeutic tool for many patients who go through this psychological disorder.

Let's see the reasons that justify these conclusions about why literature and poetry are so useful for our psychological well-being.

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Fiction books make us wake up

Reading fiction books makes us feel human. This phrase may sound somewhat exaggerated because who does not remember what is already par excellence but a thinking and feeling human being? Well, people suffering from depression are held captive in a space where they do not always have control over what they think. Where what they feel is always adverse, negative and self-destructive.

• Reading fiction supposes first of all to divest ourselves of ourselves in order to empathize with some characters.

• The brain relaxes, that fragmented mind finds calm by connecting with a story, with some details, with specific emotions.

• At the same time, and no less important, those plots that these protagonists live are full of changes and a change is what the patients who are going through a depression need.

A fiction book offers therefore the possibility of reflecting on other perspectives, of being infected by optimism, of imbibing new goals, dreams and trusts.

"If the book we read does not wake us up like a fist that hits our skull, why do we read it? So that it makes us happy? My God, we would also be happy if we did not have books, and we could, if necessary, write ourselves the books that make us happy. A book should be like an ice pick that breaks the frozen sea we have inside. "

-Kafka, in a letter to Oskar Pollak (1904) -

Poetry to describe the complexity of life

It is said that the first poetic testimony of our history is more than 4,300 years old. It is an ode to the goddess Inana, and is the work of Enheduanna, an Akkadian poet. Why do we start this literary style? What was the human being looking for with those puns, those rhymes, those stanzas and beautiful compositions?

According to a paper by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, this type of style allows us to fix emotions more deeply. Even more, in a difficult life such as that which surrounds us so often, we need a kind of language capable of handling that difficulty, of making it simple, of playing with it, of challenging it, of being its container of emotions, its catharsis , his daily alchemy ...

Why You Should Read Books - The Benefits of Reading More (animated Video)

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Literature and poetry as a way of reborn

Although we often say that literature and poetry are our refuge, they are really our way out. They are a particular window from which to peek into the world. They are that door from which, leave strengthened. Because nobody is isolated while reading a book, in fact it is being reconstructed. It is discovering other possibilities, it is rearranging ideas, including new ones and destroying others.

No one is unharmed after finishing a novel, after reading a poem. Something changes in us, something heals us and awakens us to look at ourselves and the world in a different way. In a more healthy and wise way. Therefore we will never underestimate the power of literature and poetry to favor improvement in depressive processes. They can be excellent allies.

REFERENCE:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28460078

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