Anxious To Read

Before last night, I’m pretty sure I had never heard of bibliotherapy. I discovered this term in a very interesting article related to anxiety and books at a website I like, goodereader.

Apparently, the year 2018 has been a big one for the popularity of books related to mental health, especially anxiety and depression. To me, that shouldn’t be surprising news, but it kind of is.

In the past three months, I read three mental health books: the first on anxiety, the second on depression, and the third covered both topics! What a coincidence, right? As one who has struggled with anxiety, I looked for ways to cope with it and just to feel I’m not alone.

With the increase of anxiety, in the USA especially, it makes me wonder what the cause is. Why do so many more people seem to be struggling with it?

Of course, I don’t know what the cause is and can only speculate. But for what it’s worth, I’ll throw some of my guesses out there.

I think it’s a combo of several factors: unsettling and unsatisfying bipartisan politics and the apparent degradation of integrity in our government, the negative impact on our brains by distraction from our device screens, and the fall-out from lack of internet security and privacy, especially on social media. To name a few, oh, kind of big things.

Now, if I can discover a book that neatly packages up all these ideas on our current American culture and status, that might be a good read for 2019.

Besides being educational or entertaining, reading, it seems, can be therapeutic. I think that’s great, and I do find reading to be relaxing. It also makes me wonder about writing since it seems that it can be cathartic, especially private journaling.

What do you think?