The Self-Help Movement in Mental Health: From Passivity to Interactivity?

Abstract

This chapter expands and updates Norcross’s (2006) original proposal to integrate self-help within psychotherapy through reading self-help books and autobiographies, and viewing films. This relatively passive approach can be expanded with active and interactive mental health interventions (health promotion, prevention, psychotherapy, and rehabilitation) through (1) distance writing (DW) in its various approaches (see Chap. 6), (2) homework assignments (see Chap. 4), (3) low-cost approaches to promote physical and mental health (see Chap. 5), and (4) structured mental health practice exercises (see Chaps. 7 and 8). These new approaches suggest a paradigm shift in mental health from direct face-to-face talk-based interventions to DW approaches that may mean interacting with participants online without ever seeing them directly.