Reading in Clinical Contexts

Abstract

This chapter considers the power of (often intellectually difficult and emotionally demanding) literature in both distracting from immediate pain and helping to find and heal hidden pain. Grace Farrington writes of her experience of reading with patients suffering severe and protracted mental ill health (personality disorder and psychosis) in high secure and long-term psychiatric in-patient facilities. Kate McDonnell and Helen Cook (respectively, reading-group leader and chronic pain patient) offer twin ‘insider’ views—a group leader’s and a participant’s perspective—of weekly reading sessions over six months in a pain clinic at an NHS inner-city hospital.