A practice-informed study of the theoretical bases for bibliotherapy in the English literary tradition (Elizabethan or Victorian periods)

This project will explore the existing theoretical foundations for the practice of bibliotherapy, or reading as cure, in the English literary tradition, focusing on either Elizabethan aesthetics of literary healing or Victorian models of outreach and the democratisation of reading. In addition, the project will seek to translate theory into practice, thus testing its efficacy and value, by using methods and materials suggested by the research base in shared reading groups in health contexts provided by Mersey Care NHS Trust. Dispersed across 61 sites and employing around 4,700 staff, the Trust serves a population of one million across Merseyside for community and secondary care.

The partnership with Mersey Care NHS Trust builds on a successful record of collaborative work with The Reader Organisation, an outreach unit in collaboration with the School of English at University of Liverpool. The Reader Organisation (TRO) is a nationally recognised centre for the promotion of reading as an intervention in mental health. TRO was a finalist in 2007 NHS Health and Social Awards and its community outreach has been publicly commended by Professor Louis Appleby, NHS Director for Mental Health, as ‘exactly the kind of work we at the Department of Health want to develop over the next 10 years.' TRO's ‘Get into Reading' project (GIR) is a social inclusion programme based on shared reading which runs weekly reading groups in a range of health and social care settings. TRO's intervention is distinguished from other reading therapies (which rely on ‘self-help' books) in emphasising the importance of serious, ‘classic' literature and its role in mediating experience and offering a model of human thinking and feeling. In collaboration with TRO, Mersey Care formally launched the ‘Reader in Residence' scheme in September 2007, whereby TRO-trained leaders have run shared reading groups in adult mental health centres, older people's services, high secure units, inpatient and day services. A recent report by SURE Merseyside (Service User Research and Evaluation, September 2008) demonstrates ‘the clear and tangible benefits' of reader groups to service users in terms of health and well-being, and positive cultural change in the care environment.

The doctoral research will be jointly supervised by Elizabethan/Victorian literature specialists in the School of English at UoL, and by the Medical Director and Deputy Chief Executive of Mersey Care Trust, who has been running a reading group on the GIR model in Ashworth Hospital, a high secure unit where he practises as a consultant forensic psychiatrist. Thus, this PhD is likely to be the first if its kind to seek to reclaim Arts and Humanities, and English Literature in particular, as pivotal in relation to health and well-being, and, through a mix of practical and theoretical methods, to give the existing language of English Literature an equal place alongside social and biomedical sciences in the observation and analysis of human experience. The benefits of this knowledge transfer activity promise to be deep and durable. In the short term, through delivering, and evaluating the efficacy of, a humane and inexpensive service, the project has potential both to improve the quality of life and well-being of Mersey Care service users and help increase efficiency and effectiveness of services, while providing an evidence base for local strategic planning and commissioning. In the long term, the knowledge transfer and economic impact potential of this project is huge. The government already recognises Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as a highly economic and effective form of mental health care; the controlled use of Bibliotherapy has similar potential. The project is, moreover, a prime example of knowledge transfer - as defined by moving academic research into a sphere beyond the academy - in transposing the literary-critical research techniques embodied by close reading to community settings.