How To Keep Mentally Healthy – Stephen Fry On Reading And Depression

He will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. To his own master he stands or falls. Not always, sometimes demons are involved in mental illness. Literature, in the kind of novels, short stories, poetry or plays, can enable us to transcend our physical environment. In just a few sentences we can be transported to 1950s Cuba with Hemingway, Narnia with Lewis and contemporary Afghanistan with Hosseini. Whether he is reading or writing it, he believes the latter had been critical to his ability to understand and express himself. Fry’s views on the power of poetry in his personal fight against mental health problems are an example of the transformative power that fiction can have on the psyche. While ageing and dementia, the course focussed on six major events and psychological illnesses to educate the 9000 participants -stress, heartbreak, bereavement, trauma, depression and bipolar.

In the face of his mental health problems he has found solace and understanding in novels and poetry.

The idea of literature as therapy emerged wards the end of the 19th century and was spearheaded by the ‘father of modern psychology’ -Sigmund Freud.

During his sessions with war veterans, he should prescribe ‘calming’ books to those suffering from PTSD. Therefore this article was written by The Hearty Soul.

Did you know that the Hearty Soul is a rapidly growing community dedicated to helping you discover your most healthy, balanced, and natural life. Therefore, while living or dead, who make us feel understood and have vocalized thoughts that we fear to be abnormal, in the vast swathes of books that are published, we will find people. Fiction teaches us that we aren’t journeying alone in the real world. That said, this transcendent quality was the focus of an online course, titled Literature and Mental Health. Now look. Reading for Well Being, that the University of Warwick, England hosted. Speakingtowriters, actors and professors the aim of the course is to show that reading fiction is an effective way to deal with a myriad of mental health problems and emotional situations. After years of friendship where they should suggest books to each other determined by what was troubling them at the time, susan Elderkin and Ella Berthoud founded their global bibliotherapy network, The School of Life.

a study published in theAnnual Review of Psychologyin 2011 showed that when the participants read passages about emotional events in a character’s story, they experienced identical emotion as the character.

Actually the field of bibliotherapy is on the basis of more than anecdotal evidence, nonetheless the majority of us have experienced the uplifting or empathetic effects of literature over the course of our lives. Results proved that the power of empathy with a fictional character helps prepare us for similar events in our own lives, that in turn make us more capable of psychologically dealing with future negative emotions or situations. FMRI scans showed that the position of the brain that was stimulated by an actual emotional event was also stimulated whilst reading a similarly emotional passage. That said, actor, television presenter and writer, Fry has become amid the most recognisable faces in English culture, renowned for his wit and knowledge, as a respected comedian. He has also, over the course of his life, struggled with manic depression and bipolar disorder.