Can Literature And Poetry Help Us Overcome Depression?

For the Greeks, libraries were spaces that healed the soul. Literature and poetry can, without a doubt, be a therapeutic tool to overcome depression, because a book is much more than a refuge. This environment of inspiring letters and worlds is a discovery, a channel capable of awakening us, allowing us to confront, discover and even be reborn with more courage.

Literature alone will not make a person overcome depression. This is an aspect that should be clear from the start. These types of disorders, as we already know, always require a multidisciplinary approach. Proper therapy, counseling, medication, a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle stand out as the ideal approaches to generate progress and improvement.

Now, the ancient Greeks weren’t wrong when they saw books as healing tools. This was also seen in several British hospitals during World War I. Many soldiers suffering from traumatic disorders found relief that was more than comforting when doctors and nurses made available to them a library selected especially for them.

When our insides are hurt, literature and poetry can become valuable agents of reconstruction, acting as allies for change. These are environments that drive us to healing, lead us to find calm when the depressed mind follows the rhythm of chaos. Books are pills for tranquility and catalysts for well-being.

Can literature and poetry really help us overcome depression?

Matt Haig is a British writer who achieved success through a book with the catchy title: ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’. In it, he tells movingly what it means to spend several years with depression. Far from being a self-help book, what the author wants is to make a simple point clear. Each person must be able to find their own strategy, their reason for living to get away from the precipice, their motivation to be reborn, their key to closing the door to depression. His strategy was books,  and specifically fictional narrative.

Matt Haig reached the same conclusion as many psychologists and psychiatrists, although these professionals tend to go a little further. In addition to fiction books, poetry also stands out as an exceptional therapeutic tool for many patients who experience this psychological disorder.

Let’s see what the reasons justify these conclusions. Why are literature and poetry so helpful to our psychological well-being?

fiction books wake us up

Reading fiction books makes us more human. This phrase may sound a bit exaggerated because who doesn’t remember that they are already, par excellence, a thinking and sensitive human being? People who suffer from depression are trapped in a space where they don’t always have control over what they think. Everything they feel is always harmful, negative and self-destructive.

• Reading fiction supposes, above all, that we divest ourselves of ourselves in order  to empathize with some characters.
• The brain relaxes, the fragmented mind finds calm by connecting with a story, with some details, with specific emotions.
• At the same time, but not least, the plots these protagonists experience are full of change, and a change is what patients experiencing depression need.

A fiction book offers the possibility of reflecting on other perspectives, of being infected by optimism, of absorbing new goals, dreams and trusting relationships.

Poetry to describe the complexity of life

The first poetic testimony of our history is said to be over 4,300 years old. It is an ode to the goddess Inana and is the work of Enheduanna, an Akkadian poetess. Why do we start this literary style? What was the human being looking for with this play on words, these rhymes, stanzas and beautiful compositions?

According to an article by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, this literary style allows us to define emotions more deeply. And it goes even further: in a life as difficult as the one that surrounds us so often, we need a kind of language capable of dealing with this difficulty, of simplifying it, of playing with it, of challenging it, of being its reservoir of emotions, its catharsis, its daily alchemy…

Literature and poetry as a way to be reborn

Although we often say that literature and poetry are our refuge, in reality they are our way out. They are a private window to spy on the world, they are that door through which we come out strengthened. Because no one is isolated while reading a book, they are actually rebuilding themselves. It is discovering other possibilities, it is reorganizing ideas, including new ones and destroying others.

Nobody gets away with it after reading 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 healthier and wiser way. Therefore, we cannot underestimate the power of literature and poetry to favor an improvement in depressive processes. They can be excellent allies.