Health
One in six adults in Britain will suffer from mental health problems.
Recent research from The King's Fund indicates that mental illness in England cost £50 billion in 2007. Almost half, £22.5 billion, represents money spent on direct NHS and social care services to support people with mental disorders. The remainder represents the estimated cost to the economy of lost earnings. However, recent research has found that is potential to help more people achieve better mental health through early detection and treatment.
Reading and health
Bibliotherapy, or the use of reading to heal, covers screative reading to promote health and well-being at one end of the spectrum to clinical intervention and psychological therapy at the other, with all sorts of variation between.
Evidence is building that reading can help to keep people well and make them better. And interest in psychological therapies such as reading is attracting increasing attention from primary care practitioners as a way of reducing demand on the NHS by keeping people well, giving patients choices, promoting self care and helping them to understand the health information they are given.
Reading, health and libraries
Libraries are emerging as a new strategic partner for the health sector. There is a library on most high streets providing an unrivalled local and national network of community sites and outreach facilities.
Health and well-being is core to the public library vision. The Society of Chief Librarians has formed a health group and is developing a Memorandum of Understanding with the DoH to promote and build the role of libraries in this area.
Libraries work to support health and well-being contributes to key local and national indicators including Local Area Agreements and Public Service Agreement targets
There is a thriving reading and health landscape in libraries involving a wide spectrum of activity including Books on Prescription schemes using cognitive behavioural therapy methods and self-help reading, health information reading initiatives, reader development work and reading group activity.
What we are doing
We are working with the Society of Chief Librarians to:
- Develop a nationally co-ordinated approach to libraries' reading and health work and raise the profile of this work with health sector partners
- Showcase the range of different types of reading and health work currently delivered in libraries and explore potential new models and approaches
- Support and promote action research in this area with a particular focus on older people
- Gather and develop examples of good practice in this area
- Advocate libraries work with reading and health.
We will be running a series of events to profile the role of reading in delivering health and well-being and the work of libraries in supporting this work.
Activities we are running
We kicked off with a think tank to pull together key stakeholders from across the world of reading, libraries and health. This group will define a vision for reading and health work in libraries, agree priorities, identify relevant evidence and research, define partnership structures and identify models of good practice.
We will also run:
- regional showcase and training seminars
- a programme of research and project development
- training
- reading group activity with specific audiences
- a database of models of good practice
- other advocacy materials
Check back for updates soon.
MLA funds research into health and libraries
The Museums Libraries and Archives Council has commissioned a new piece of research to find out about the activities that public libraries are running that support and promote health and well being. We are working in partnership with LISU, and being supported by Professor Neil Frude, to carry out this research.
The aim is to gain a better understanding of the potential value libraries are able to contribute to communities' health and well being by examining the extent of different types of health related activities they are running. In particular, we will be focusing on activities that are organised in partnership with health service providers.
The intntion is that that this research will be used to develop a coherent public library health and well being offer and to support the case for investing in future research.
The work will consist of three phases:
- Desk research and interviews with key opinon formers and other important stakeholders
- A survey of all library authorities in England
- Researching and writing up case studies
At the end of the reseach we will provide a final report that presents a profile of the current health and well being activities across the public library service in England.
Further information
Read more about our reading and health work by downloading the Reading and health research brief in the Resources column on this page. Contact Debbie Hicks for further information or if you would like to get involved.