The Reading Cure, Guardian, Saturday, 5th January 2008
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“Prose not Prozac” is the prescription. Literature not lithium. A talking cure in the presence of Keats, Dickens or Shakespeare rather than a physician or psychiatrist.
Under the umbrella of Jane Davis’s (University of Liverpool) “Get into Reading” scheme, there are now around 50 groups across Merseyside: groups in care homes, day centres, neurological rehab units, acute psychiatric wards, cottage hospitals, sheltered accommodation and libraries; groups for people with learning disabilities, Alzheimers, motor-neurone disease, mental health problems; groups for prisoners, excluded teenagers, looked-after children, recovering drug-addicts, nurses and carers; groups that are small – no more than 10 – so there’s a sense of intimacy.
More ambitiously, they’re an experiment in healing, or, to put it less grandiosely, an attempt to see whether reading can alleviate pain or mental distress. For Kate, who has suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis for 30 years, the answer is clear: “Reading pushes the pain away into a place where it no longer seems important.
One particularly successful initiative has been reading poetry to and with dementia patients, some of whom have lost all sense of who and where they are but can recite the words of a poem learned at school 70 years ago. As Get into Reading worker Katie Peters describes it: “One lady was shouting and swearing at anyone who approached, and when I mentioned poetry told me in no uncertain terms to go away. But as I sat and read poem after poem, she visibly relaxed, her mood changed completely and she happily chatted about the poems to other residents.
Thanks to Jackie for this fab link
Filed under: CBT Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, OT - Occupational Therapy, Therapy, alzheimers, dementia, mental health | Tagged: alternative therapy, books, cbt, healing, mental health, occupational, therapist, Therapy
