The Effect of Bibliotherapy on the Psychological Capital of the Employees of the Department of Management and Medical Informatics of Isfahan University of Medical Scienc

Bibliotherapy is a process or activity that uses dynamic interaction along with reading a book in order to help people to solve problems or increase their cognitive understanding. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of the effect of bibliotherapy on the psychological capital of the employees of the department of management and medical informatics of Isfahan University of medical science.

This is an applied study using a semi-empirical method. The statistical population consists of all non-faculty employees of the department of management and medical informatics of Isfahan University of Medical Science which was a total of 70 people. 28 members of the population were randomly selected and placed in two experiment and control groups and answered the psychological capital questionnaire. The Data gathering tool was the Psychological capital questionnaire of Lutherans. The experiment group underwent 6 two hour sections of bibliotherapy where the control group underwent no interference. In order to investigate the effect of Bibliotherapy, both groups answered the questionnaire again one month after the final bibliotherapy section. The gathered information was analyzed using descriptive (average and frequency distribution) and analytical (independent t-test, paired t-test, Chi square and Mann–Whitney U test) with the help of SPSS20 software.

The findings showed that there was no meaningful distinction between the average scores of physiological capital of both groups before interference by comparing factors of Self-Esteem, hopefulness, Resiliency and optimism. However the average physiological capital score and average score of each factor in the experiment group was meaningfully higher than that of control group after the bibliotherapy sections.

With the increase of literacy and the culture of reading in the information age, bibliotherapy is a suitable and harmless treatment method that can be used to help with daily challenges, worries and stresses of the busy everyday life. Due to trainable nature of psychological capital one can use bibliotherapy to increase the psychological capital of the employees of different organizations which will in turn provide both the employees themselves and the organization with material and spiritual gains.