Issues in Humanities Therapy: An Applied Linguistics Perspective

As a clinical application, Humanities Therapy interweaves linguistics, literature, philosophy, history, and arts, as a de novo approach to prevent and treat patients with various degrees of mental, emotional and physical disorders. This therapy has been empirically implemented in Korea on students, children, prisoners, soldiers, alcoholics and refugees, where the suicide rate is one of the highest in the world. Techniques used are speech correction, journal writing, story-telling, poem recitation, reading literature, listening to music, performing psychodrama, and philosophical counseling. Because the clinical procedures and methodology used in speech and communication therapy are well known, they have functioned as the model approach for the other components in Humanities Therapy. So far, the results are promising and suggest that Humanities Therapy can be used effectively to cure mental and physical disorders and to improve the level of client satisfaction, professional assessment, and objective evaluation of the therapy.