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RE: How much do we tell the children? Q3 Bibliotherapy
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:14:31 -0500
Claudia,
Thanks for the link to the post. I wasn't aware of most of these reports but they support my point. All the studies referenced in the post are focused on adults in counseling or other therapy situations (depression, grief, anxiety), all involve less than 100 participants and most less than 50 and all are a snapshot in time rather than longitudinal in nature. Most the cited works explicitly acknowledge that there is no evidence that bibliotherapy does work. They also document that despite the lack of evidence, many counseling/therapy practitioners do use bibliotherapy anyway because they believe it ought to work. A far as I can tell there are no large scale (participants in the hundreds), longitudinal (multi-year) studies of the effectiveness of books used for bibliotherapeutic purposes among children.
There are five studies that are focused only on adults in some form of structured therapy where it becomes difficult to disentangle whether any benefits arise from specific treatment strategies (such as bibliotherapy) or from the simple act of being in therapy at all. Most of these studies find no difference between using traditional methods (drug therapy, standard counseling treatment, etc.) and using bibliotherapy, suggesting that it is the simple act of counseling intervention that makes a difference, not the particular method. The studies usually provide descriptions of why bibliotherapy ought to work and some provide evidence that it works as well as any of the other traditional treatments but none of them provide any data on the actual results - how many improved versus how many treated nor (despite describing how bibliotherapy can also be harmful) do they provide any data on those negatively affected.
Three of the studies that seemed to include some element of child involvement all reached neutral or negative conclusions.
. Who uses bibliotherapy and why? A survey from an underserviced area by Adams SJ, Pitre NL. - "CONCLUSION: Most therapists recommend books to their clients, but there is little empirical evidence of efficacy."
. Lost in translation: bibliotherapy and evidence-based medicine by Dysart-Gale D. - Evidence-based medicine's (EBM) quantitative methodologies "prevents EBM from effectively evaluating bibliotherapy or making it amenable to clinical and research governance."
. A meta-analysis of bibliotherapy studies by Marrs RW. - "There was no significant differences between the effects of bibliotherapy and therapist-administered treatments."
The American Counseling Association Survey of 2009 did include counseling/therapy practitioners, 20% of whom focused on children. The survey also had no data on effectiveness. The nugget that jumped out at me was that although 80% of therapists (adult and child oriented) used bibliotherapy (albeit primarily of the didactic, self-help book kind), only 3% consulted librarians for ideas on which books to use. That seems to me to be a fairly profound disconnect.
The net from all the links in the post is that everyone thinks bibliotherapy ought to work. Most counselors and therapists act on that belief by incorporating it into their therapy practices. But no one has any data on bibliotherapy effectiveness at all. There is evidence that, in a structured counseling environment, as a technique, it is roughly as effective as various other traditional counseling techniques.
This is akin to the situation with Head Start. Everyone thinks it is a good idea. There is a logical integrity as to why it ought to work. We all believe it ought to work. In the case of Head Start though, we do have robust (large numbers and longitudinal) studies to answer the question as to effectiveness. Five studies in the past thirty years and they all show the same thing. For the participants there is a rise in the key academic and behavioral performance metrics in the year or two in which they participate in Head Start. Within two years of finishing Head Start all their academic and behavioral performance metrics have reverted to the mean of non-participants, i.e. it made no difference. In the case of Head Start, we have a program that virtually everyone agrees ought to work and ought to make a lasting difference (just as we believe regarding bibliotherapy) but we know that what we believe is not supported by the data. The only difference with bibliotherapy is that we simply don't have the data to det ermine one way or another whether it makes a difference.
Charles
Received on Mon 28 Nov 2011 10:14:31 AM CST
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:14:31 -0500
Claudia,
Thanks for the link to the post. I wasn't aware of most of these reports but they support my point. All the studies referenced in the post are focused on adults in counseling or other therapy situations (depression, grief, anxiety), all involve less than 100 participants and most less than 50 and all are a snapshot in time rather than longitudinal in nature. Most the cited works explicitly acknowledge that there is no evidence that bibliotherapy does work. They also document that despite the lack of evidence, many counseling/therapy practitioners do use bibliotherapy anyway because they believe it ought to work. A far as I can tell there are no large scale (participants in the hundreds), longitudinal (multi-year) studies of the effectiveness of books used for bibliotherapeutic purposes among children.
There are five studies that are focused only on adults in some form of structured therapy where it becomes difficult to disentangle whether any benefits arise from specific treatment strategies (such as bibliotherapy) or from the simple act of being in therapy at all. Most of these studies find no difference between using traditional methods (drug therapy, standard counseling treatment, etc.) and using bibliotherapy, suggesting that it is the simple act of counseling intervention that makes a difference, not the particular method. The studies usually provide descriptions of why bibliotherapy ought to work and some provide evidence that it works as well as any of the other traditional treatments but none of them provide any data on the actual results - how many improved versus how many treated nor (despite describing how bibliotherapy can also be harmful) do they provide any data on those negatively affected.
Three of the studies that seemed to include some element of child involvement all reached neutral or negative conclusions.
. Who uses bibliotherapy and why? A survey from an underserviced area by Adams SJ, Pitre NL. - "CONCLUSION: Most therapists recommend books to their clients, but there is little empirical evidence of efficacy."
. Lost in translation: bibliotherapy and evidence-based medicine by Dysart-Gale D. - Evidence-based medicine's (EBM) quantitative methodologies "prevents EBM from effectively evaluating bibliotherapy or making it amenable to clinical and research governance."
. A meta-analysis of bibliotherapy studies by Marrs RW. - "There was no significant differences between the effects of bibliotherapy and therapist-administered treatments."
The American Counseling Association Survey of 2009 did include counseling/therapy practitioners, 20% of whom focused on children. The survey also had no data on effectiveness. The nugget that jumped out at me was that although 80% of therapists (adult and child oriented) used bibliotherapy (albeit primarily of the didactic, self-help book kind), only 3% consulted librarians for ideas on which books to use. That seems to me to be a fairly profound disconnect.
The net from all the links in the post is that everyone thinks bibliotherapy ought to work. Most counselors and therapists act on that belief by incorporating it into their therapy practices. But no one has any data on bibliotherapy effectiveness at all. There is evidence that, in a structured counseling environment, as a technique, it is roughly as effective as various other traditional counseling techniques.
This is akin to the situation with Head Start. Everyone thinks it is a good idea. There is a logical integrity as to why it ought to work. We all believe it ought to work. In the case of Head Start though, we do have robust (large numbers and longitudinal) studies to answer the question as to effectiveness. Five studies in the past thirty years and they all show the same thing. For the participants there is a rise in the key academic and behavioral performance metrics in the year or two in which they participate in Head Start. Within two years of finishing Head Start all their academic and behavioral performance metrics have reverted to the mean of non-participants, i.e. it made no difference. In the case of Head Start, we have a program that virtually everyone agrees ought to work and ought to make a lasting difference (just as we believe regarding bibliotherapy) but we know that what we believe is not supported by the data. The only difference with bibliotherapy is that we simply don't have the data to det ermine one way or another whether it makes a difference.
Charles
Received on Mon 28 Nov 2011 10:14:31 AM CST
