Hi all:

Our business in this site is talking about books, writing, publishing, and of course reading. In my facet as psychiatrist I’ve been known to use examples from books and talk to patients about literature (and films. Many want to talk about anything but their mental illnesses, very understandable when in some cases they’ve been in contact with services for years and have been asked the same questions over and over).

I was very interested when a few years back, whilst on a meeting with some forensic psychiatrist, one of my colleagues who worked at Rampton Hospital (a High Secure Mental Hospital in the outskirts of Liverpool) told us that she had joined in an initiative of the University of Liverpool to try and bring reading to a variety of settings, including mental health hospitals. The idea was that volunteers would run groups and would read especially selected…