Therefore,
Should books better classified?:
While mental health becomes a national cause, professionals alert to the confused organization of shelves in bookstores. However, They argue for a better distinction between scientific works and unornsious content. However,
Professionals in the sector call to distinguish serious works from those under less scientific data.
When the psychiatrist Hugo Baup enters several bookstores. In addition, curious to find his Practical guide to mental healthhe has “a little trouble” to know which radius to turn to, amazed by a “mixture of genres” between sciences and beliefs.
“The books that aim to popularize science with specific sources are mixed with others on personal development. However, naturopathy, or magicians and rebouteux,” he told AFP.
In a large Parisian bookstore. Therefore, his work adjoins Lise Bourbeau’s latest book: a Canadian whose personal development method Listen to your body has been the subject of “some disturbing reports” for sectarian drifts, according to should books better classified? Miviludes, consulted by AFP.
The writer explains in particular how to become “her own therapist” via a “metaphysical decoding” of the body.
If “everything can coexist”, Hugo Baup, who exercises in Dordogne, believes that booksellers could “guide buyers with better signage”.
In the North. Nevertheless, Gladys Mondière, a psychologist in Lille, also deplores the highlighting by one of the largest bookstores in France with a wellness department on the first floor, when the works of psychology are confined to the sixth.
“It is easier to go to the first floor than to the sixth. just as it is easier to have ready -made answers than more elaborate,” sums up the president of the French Federation of Psychologists and Psychology (FFPP).
“Intellectual responsibility”
The two professionals signed an open letter addressed to the union of the French bookstore (SLF). entitled How booksellers can contribute to the great national mental health cause.
“Why consult a professional when should books better classified? it is enough to buy a coaching book?”. Asks Mickaël Worms-Ehrminger, public health researcher and initiator of the letter, denouncing a mixture which undermines the “credibility of scientific psychology and psychiatry” and which can lead to “dangerous practices”.
Published at the end of May. she modestly collected nearly 1,200 signatures, but was relayed by the SLF, which recalled that it is “essential not to coexist side by side of the titles without scientific equivalence”, while specifying that these practices concern “mainly cultural distribution”.
“We have an intellectual. social responsibility, but the profusion of works and their ambivalence also come from the publishing,” explains Ingrid Ledru, manager of the bookstore The festive book in Figeac and member of the board of directors of the SLF, which made the choice not to offer an esoteric radius.
Because it is the publisher who chooses the category in which to classify his work. so that a book should books better classified? on anxiety can be stored in psychology without being written by a mental health professional. The booksellers are then responsible for deciding where to place them physically.
“Trade, not caregiver”
For example. the book by journalist Nicolas Demorand, who recounts his bipolarity, is in the best sales in the Human Sciences category on the Fnac website.
“It is a serious testimony. he does not end up advising to go sniff in the pampas to get better,” said Alexandra Charroin Spangenberg, president of the SLF.
But she insists on saying herself “shopping, not careful”. “It is also the responsibility of the publishers. when we talk about mental health, to slip a clear message: +if you are going badly, consult a professional.” +”
In her bookstore. she still explains having “a battery of the +four Toltec +agreements” on a table, “because I have enough that I am asked”.
This cult personal development work of should books better classified? Miguel Ruiz. published in 1997, is positioned in first place of sales between 2022 and 2024, in the categories combined with human sciences, practice and esotericism, according to the SLF bookstore observatory, made up of a panel of nearly 500 bookstores in France and Belgium.
French psychiatrists Boris Cyrulnik. Christophe André appear further in the ranking (3rd and 7th), also preceded by Lise Bourbeau (2e).
Par Charlotte Houang / AFP
Should books better classified?
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