Kiriakos Chatzipentidis
Kiriakos Chatzipentidis is librarian, educator, teacher, bibliotherapist, PhD student in Department of Education at University of Wroclaw.
Research interests are bibliotherapy, Universities of the Third Age and pedagogy of the old-age.
When and how did you start working with bibliotherapy?
In the academic year 2010/2011 at the Department of Psychology at University of Wrocław, as the co-founder, with prof. Wiktor Czernianin, of the Postgraduate Studies in Bibliotherapy, and as an assistant of the editor-in-chief of polish scientific journal “Bibliotherapy Review”. Recently I am working also as a teacher of the subject “Bibliotherapy and fairytale-therapy” at the Post-secondary School of Culture Animators “SKiBA” in Wrocław.
Tell us how you use books and storytelling in your activities?
At the center of my interests is reminiscence bibliotherapy for the elderly in nursing homes. Reminiscence bibliotherapy is a memory-based form of reading therapy intended for the elderly. The reminiscence themes are arranged in chronological order, reminiscing the life history strengthens the memory of the elderly, enables the expression of emotions and improves mental well-being.
What are your plans for the future?
I think there is a need to re-thinking “application” of reminiscence bibliotherapy during the COVID-19 epidemic. In my opinion reminiscence therapy should change its form into online-therapy, focus on individual or couple therapy and be based on a standardized and unified program supervised by Polish Bibliotherapy Association. There is a lot to do in the online bibliotherapy area.
