Okay-drama for psychological well being? Binge on, one skilled says

Should you’ve ever binge-watched a complete season of a Okay-drama like “Squid Sport” or “Crash Touchdown On You”, one Korean-American skilled has excellent news: it is doubtless improved your psychological well being.

Excessive manufacturing values, top-notch appearing and enticing stars have helped propel South Korean TV reveals to the highest of worldwide viewership charts, however therapist Jeanie Chang, says there are deeper causes so many individuals are hooked.

With soap-like plotlines that deal with the whole lot from earth-shattering grief to the enjoyment of latest love, watching Okay-dramas may help folks reconnect with their very own feelings or course of trauma, she says, giving the reveals a therapeutic energy that transcends their cultural context.

“All of us have household pressures and expectations, battle, trauma, hope,” she stated, including that watching heavy subjects being efficiently managed on display screen can change folks’s means to navigate real-world challenges.

For Chang, who was born in Seoul however raised in the USA, Okay-drama was notably useful in permitting her to reconnect along with her roots—which she rejected as a toddler determined to assimilate.

However “the messages in Korean dramas are common,” Chang stated.

“Psychological well being is how you feel, the way you relate to others, psychologically, how your mind has been impacted by issues. That is psychological well being. We see that in a Korean drama.”

‘Soften my coronary heart’

World Okay-drama viewership has exploded in the previous couple of years, trade knowledge reveals, with many abroad viewers, particularly in main markets like the USA, turning to Korean content material through the pandemic.

Between 2019 and 2022, viewership of Korean tv and flicks elevated six-fold on Netflix, its knowledge confirmed, and Korean sequence at the moment are probably the most watched non-English content material on the platform.

American schoolteacher Jeanie Barry found Okay-drama through a household funeral, when a good friend advisable a sequence—2020’s “It is Okay to Not Be Okay”—she thought may assist her after a troublesome time.

“There was one thing about it, the way in which that this tradition cope with trauma, psychological melancholy, simply actually struck a chord for me,” Barry, who had traveled to South Korea as a part of a Okay-drama tour organized by therapist Chang, instructed AFP.

“I began to grieve once I had not been. It was lots of tears throughout that drama, but it surely additionally made me see that there’s a gentle on the finish of the tunnel,” she stated.

Instantly hooked, Barry stated she had watched 114 Okay-dramas since discovering the style, and successfully given up watching English-language tv.

“They let me soften my coronary heart,” she stated.

Fellow tour member and American Erin McCoy stated she had struggled with melancholy since she was an adolescent, however Okay-drama helped her handle her signs.

With melancholy, “if you reside with it that lengthy, you are simply numb and so you do not actually really feel unhealthy essentially however you do not ever really feel good both,” she stated.

“You simply do not feel something,” she stated, including that Okay-drama allowed her to expertise feelings once more.

“There’re so many highs and lows in each one in every of them, and as I felt the characters’ feelings, it simply helped me relate to my very own extra,” she stated.

“I really feel like I used to be in a position to specific and expertise emotion once more.”

‘Artwork remedy’?

The concept a Okay-drama binge may help with psychological well being could seem far-fetched, but it surely chimes with decades-old psychotherapy concepts, one skilled stated.

“Watching Korean dramas may be useful for nervousness and melancholy from the perspective of artwork remedy,” Im Su-geun, head of a psychiatry clinic in Seoul, instructed AFP.

First used within the Forties, artwork remedy initially concerned sufferers drawing, however advanced to include different creative actions.

“Visible media like Korean dramas have important strengths that align effectively with psychotherapy,” he stated.

Okay-drama—or tv and cinema usually—may help viewers “achieve insights into conditions from a brand new perspective, fostering wholesome values and offering options to their points,” he stated.

It’s unlikely to be prescribed by a physician, he stated, but when a therapist had been to suggest a particular drama that associated to the affected person’s case, it might be useful.

For instance, it could actually present a roadmap for sufferers “going through particular conditions, resembling breakups or loss,” he stated.

© 2024 AFP