the effect of bibliotherapy on the mental health of sexually abused women and girls

Introduction: bibliotherapy is one of the methods for solving mental and psychological problems. the main goal of this research is to identify the impact of bibliotherapy on the mental health of sexually abused women and girls, including four dimensions: physical symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, depression, and disruption of social functioning.methods: this research is an ab design (semi-experimental case study). a pre-intervention stage (a) was planned for each patient to determine the baseline, followed by the therapeutic intervention implementation stage (b). the statistical population comprised five sexually abused women and girls from the social emergency. sampling was done in a targeted manner using the available sampling method. the general mental health questionnaire (ghq-28) was used to evaluate the mental health of the samples. the bibliotherapy process was carried out in eight sessions of 45 minutes, two sessions a week. graphical and statistical analyses were used to analyze the data. in addition to graphical analysis, recovery percentage, and stable change index were used.results: bibliotherapy has impacted the mental health of four out of five participants, with an overall improvement rate of 0.57 and a reliable change index greater than 1.96. furthermore, bibliotherapy has positively influenced subscales of physical symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, depression, and social functioning, with an overall improvement rate of over 50% and a reliable change index greater than 1.96, indicating clinical and statistical significance (p ≤ 0.05). therefore, it can be concluded that bibliotherapy has positively impacted mental health and its subscales.conclusion: bibliotherapy is efficacious in improving the mental health of sexually abused women and girls, and it seems to be a suitable option for the mental health of sexually abused women and girls as a complementary treatment method.