스토리텔링을 활용한 인문치료 사례연구 -우울증 진단을 받은 대학생 A 사례를 중심으로-

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the effects of storytelling-based humanities therapy on relieving depression diagnosed in a university student. Two preliminary interviews, ten sessions of humanities therapy, and three follow-up interviews were conducted for the purpose of this case study. Humanities therapy refers to holistic activities that attempt to prevent and heal emotional, cognitive, and social issues and the pain experienced by human beings using therapeutic principles and methods studied in the humanities. Therefore, this method integrates literature, philosophy, image, music, art, and writing among others. During the humanities therapy sessions conducted for this case study, the subject was asked to express his or her honest feelings and therapeutic stories were provided so that a dominant story could be changed to a healthy alternative story, all of which to relieve the subject's depression. The study results showed that a self-story full of repeated thoughts of death stated during the early diagnosis session, had changed to one expressing the individual’s will of no longer being willing to put death into action and a willingness to prepare for the future during the final session. This result proves that storytelling-based humanities therapy can serve as a positive factor to relieve a subject's depression. However, it is also true that, despite this meaningful result, it is hard to estimate conclusively the therapeutic effect of just ten sessions and to generalize this study's result since it targeted just one subject. Nevertheless, this study might be said to introduce a possibly effective approach to heal depression, which is a serious contemporary issue, of people in their twenties, including university students.