Shared Reading: assessing the intrinsic value of a literature-based health intervention

Abstract

Public health strategies have placed increasing emphasis on psychosocial and arts-based strategies for promoting well-being. This study presents preliminary findings for a specific literary-based intervention, Shared Reading, which provides community-based spaces in which individuals can relate with both literature and one another. A 12-week crossover design was conducted with 16 participants to compare benefits associated with six sessions of Shared Reading versus a comparison social activity, Built Environment workshops. Data collected included quantitative self-report measures of psychological well-being, as well as transcript analysis of session recordings and individual video-assisted interviews. Qualitative findings indicated five intrinsic benefits associated with Shared Reading: liveness, creative inarticulacy, the emotional, the personal and the group (or collective identity construction). Quantitative data additionally showed that the intervention is associated with enhancement of a sense of 'Purpose in Life'. Limitations of the study included the small sample size and ceiling effects created by generally high levels of psychological well-being at baseline. The therapeutic potential of reading groups is discussed, including the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value within arts-and-health interventions.

A comparative study of cognitive behavioural therapy and shared reading for chronic pain

“…Nobody knows why this text resonates personally for T, not even the facilitator. This is what we might call implicit therapy,31 doing its own work hiddenly in the moment of reading. Perhaps a very great deal of what happens in SR must remain thus hidden from view.…”

“…Together with qualitative findings that reading ‘stimulates metacognition and high-level mentalisation in relation to deepened and expanded emotional investment in human pursuits (created by the book)’,31 it is possible, a recent neurological study has suggested, that some of the benefit associated with reading may come from ‘diverting individuals away from processing their struggles via ingrained and ineffective channels and towards more diverse, novel and effective reasoning options’ 34. These findings seem particularly relevant to a condition in which the nervous system is ‘recruiting’ signals into an existing pain pathway and sending messages to the brain when there is no physical stimulus or damage 35.…”

“…These elements include: literature's offering of a stimulus to mental agility and emotional flexibility in a way which few activities (including other arts-related ones) demand with equivalent directness and immediacy;28 slowed deep thinking in intrinsic relation to personal emotion, where the text is not a two-dimensional manual but more like a voiced living presence;29 memory or recovery of lost aspects of being, where the reading matter helps bridge the gap between a current unwell self, and a past healthy self and enables integration of fragmented parts of the self into a functioning whole;30 the shared group setting, and the literature within it, offering a compassionate alternative (and partial antidote) to the experience of being judged, exposed or disregarded within the world, and enabling the compression of lived experience in moments of sudden reflection and realisation 31…”

“…Texts were not specifically chosen for their relevance to pain, as it is not SR's practice to target particular ‘conditions’ but to make available the full spectrum of human experience which a broad diet of literature offers 26. p. 17, 31,p. 119 The choice was guided rather by (i) tried and tested SR texts, which have proved successful in evoking response in other (non-clinical) groups and (ii) the key finding from the pilot study that emotionally and intellectually challenging material had been favoured by participants 37.…”

Murder by the book: using crime fiction as a bibliotherapeutic resource

“…The assumption that taste needs to be ‘elevated’ to guide the reader on a path to self-improvement can be seen throughout the history of reading 16. In modern schemes aimed at engaging people with literature, a distinction is often made between the classics and other fiction 20. Reading certain books (including the classics) is still associated with symbolic mastery and increased cultural capital 7…”