13 books scientifically proven to make you happy

A growing number of therapists are recommending something surprising for depressed and anxious patients: reading.  They have even set up a clinical trial system for books. Mental-health professionals around the world will determine the books efficacy in a similar fashion to drug trials: Compare and contrast patients’ depression before and after reading the book, compared to patients who didn’t.

I happen to like Brits at their Best’s take on Bibliotherapy.

“There’s something to be said about reading a good book when we’re young. Dante and Dickens can help readers avoid the great mistake that Scrooge and all the inhabitants of Dante’s Hell made – loving the wrong thing.”

Children’s Literature as a Resource, also adds this,

“Bibliotherapy has been shown additionally to have positive effects on students’ problem-solving ability, prosocial behavior, values development, interpersonal relations, acceptance of people different from themselves, and reading achievement (Cornett & Cornett, 1980).”

But no, these are true self-help books, a $600 million market, and one of publishing’s hottest categories. The Authoritative Guide to Self-Help Resources in Mental Health, Revised Edition, ranks more than 1,000 self-help books according to their effectiveness, based on clinical trials and on the clinical experience of professionals. Here are 13 books prescribed in Denbighshire County, ready to serve up some happiness:

  1. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated
  2. How to Stop Worrying (Overcoming Common Problems)
  3. Overcoming Anger and Irritability (Overcoming)
  4. Managing Anger
  5. Overcoming Anxiety (Overcoming)
  6. Overcoming Depression: A Step-by-Step Approach to Gaining Control Over Depression
  7. Overcoming Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (Overcoming)
  8. The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook
  9. Self-Esteem
  10. 10 Days to Great Self-esteem
  11. Overcoming Low Self-esteem (Self-help)
  12. You’ll Get Over It
  13. Overcoming Traumatic Stress (Overcoming Series)
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23 comments to “13 books scientifically proven to make you happy”
  1. When I am down I enjoy a good book, sometimes from the Chicken Soup series. I also like to watch a good comedy to lift my spirits

  2. I’m not sure that overcoming neurosis really makes you happy (?) Freud himself said that psychoanalysis transforms neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness…

    That being said, I have a recommendation (and it has a really, really embarrassing, corny title): Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star.

    It got me out of a rut and writing….among other things. Beck writes for O Magazine; she’s sort of funny and wry…and finding your “north star”, ugh, really is about getting happy

  3. My favourite “Get over it all ready and stop calling me at 2 in the morning with your moans about being dumped by that guy I and everyone you know told you was trouble but you wouldn’t listen so it’s all your own stupid fault” (well it was something like that) isn’t on your list. It doesn’t exist but it was the title of the self help book a character in a story I read once was writing.

  4. I wonder how you could self-help your self out of post traumatic stress? That one seems a bit of a stretch!
    Love self-help books though!

  5. I have some of those books, I think. Apparently just owning them isn’t enough. Hmmmmm….

    My list “Thirteen More (Possibly Scandalous) Things You Might Not Know About Me” is up. 🙂

  6. Pingback:   13 books scientifically proven to make you happy by depression.vahalo.com

  7. Pingback: Thursday Thirteen #21 | impworks

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