Do self-help books work? I see people on message boards and blogs scoff at the idea of using a self-help book to end an addiction all the time. They laugh at the very notion, as if it’s impossible to read a book and subsequently use its lessons to change your life. But is it really that silly of an idea? I don’t think so, but then again, I have 2 good friends who’ve written self-help books for addiction. Stanton Peele gets emails and phone calls full of thanks and praise for his books 7 Tools To Beat Addiction and The Truth About Addiction And Recovery, and Mark Scheeren gets the same for The Saint Jude Home Program on a regular basis. Nevertheless I see people who talk about addiction on the web dismiss self-help books as a bunch of useless nonsense all the time. Some of these haters testify to the fact that they read a certain book and nothing happened. Certainly, I don’t doubt or question their personal experience, however, I think their incredulousness may tell us more about their worldview than it actually does about the effectiveness of self help books.
It might help to see how a self help book can help if we look at an analogy, so here’s another question: Can a cookbook bake a cake? Well that’s silly, of course a cookbook can’t bake a cake. It’s a stack of paper with words printed on it and bound together. It doesn’t have arms to mix ingredients together, nor does it have a consciousness capable of measuring those ingredients, and it doesn’t have the ability to move independently. A cookbook, in and of itself, cannot bake a cake – but a person can take the knowledge contained in a cookbook and proceed to bake quite a tasty cake. Likewise, a person can read a cookbook, dream about the cake, wish that he had one, but take no action to bake the cake. It would be pretty foolish though for him to then conclude that cookbooks “don’t work.”
This isn’t to say that all books are equal and effective. If a cookbook gives me a recipe for a cake which tells me to throw 10 eggs, some ground beef, and vinegar in a frying pan – then I certainly won’t end up with a cake after following those instructions. Knowledge is power, but nonsense is downright harmful. The ideas and instructions contained in a self help book, if they’re based in reality, can be quite helpful – but if those ideas and instructions are wrong, then they won’t be helpful, and may even be harmful if taken seriously.
I get your point, but do self-help books really work?
Funny you should ask, because beyond the anecdotal evidence of personal testimonials, the effectiveness of self-help materials has actually been scientifically studied. David D Burns MD wrote a book titled Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy which teaches some basic cognitive behavioral techniques for overcoming depression. Subsequently some researchers gave people the book, and checked in with them to administer some tests for tracking depression, as he reported in a later book:
At the end of the four-week waiting period, two-thirds of the patients who read Feeling Good had improved substantially or recovered, even though they did not receive any medications or psychotherapy. In fact, they improved so much that they didn’t need any additional treatment.
In contrast, the patients who did not receive Feeling Good [but were simply on a waiting list for treatment] failed to improve. The researchers then gave them a copy of Felling Good and asked the to read it during a second four-week waiting period. Two-thirds of them recovered and did not need additional treatment. Furthermore, the patients who responded to Feeling Good have not relapsed, but have maintained their gains for up to three years so far. [1]
There are similar findings for addiction self-help materials, as William Miller found, somewhat accidentally. He was testing three different treatment methods for controlled drinking, and found a good effect with the methods he was testing, but as an afterthought, decided to give half his patients a self-help manual he created as a sort of “aftercare” plan. Those that weren’t given the book stayed pretty stable at the same level they’d been drinking at the end of the treatment, but those who’d been given the manual made big improvements without further treatment. After this surprising result, he conducted several more similar studies, even going so far as comparing people who only received the self help book to those who only received counseling/treatment – and found that 80% of those undergoing treatment improved, while 88% of those who only received the book improved. The self help book worked better than treatment! You can read his 1982 presentation on several related studies here.
Hilariously, both Burns, Miller and other researchers involved have labeled the use of a self help book as “bibliotherapy”! I suspect that both Burns and Miller use the term bibliotherapy with tongue in cheek. It’s funny to me, because the way I see it, it’s not therapy at all, or if it is, then the term “therapy” becomes meaningless. After all, if learning some ideas from reading a book, and applying those ideas to your life in order to get a desired effect qualifies as therapy, then a book on financial planning, interior design, carpentry, management skills, or even a cookbook would qualify as “bibliotherapy.”
So you see, beyond anecdotal evidence there is actual scientific evidence that self-help books can indeed work – even for problems which we’ve allowed the medical profession to monopolize, such as depression or addiction. Self-help books can work, but it’s important to recognize the true agent of change. Just as our ridiculous example shows that a cookbook can’t bake a cake, a self-help book on addiction can’t change your habits or make your choices about substance use for you – the action stage is up to you. You are the agent of change. Granted, the actions aren’t always so straightforward as combining specific amounts of milk, eggs, and flour. The actions needed for changing a substance use habit are decidedly more abstract, and involve questioning your beliefs, expending the mental effort necessary to grasp and test new concepts, daring to weigh the value of your current choices, and showing the courage to make bold new choices for happiness. No, a book can’t do these things, but it can provide you with information and methods by which you can do these things for yourself – and isn’t that all summed up in the name of the genre – self-help?
[1] Burns, David D. MD, When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life
[2] Miller, William R. PhD, Therapy Without Therapists, Recent Research On Bibliotherapy And Other Minimal Contact Treatments. LINK TO PDF
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