Reading and 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.
Health and well-being
The Reading Agency's health and well-being programme has got off to a strong start with a number of key developments.
Work with us to develop a health offer for libraries
As part of our shared work plan with the Society of Chief Librarians, we are helping public libraries develop their reading and health offer. We aim to raise the profile of libraries' strategic contribution to the local authority's health and well-being agenda and make them partners of choice for delivering health and social care services.
We have published a paper and are looking for two SCL regions/sub regions wanting to work with us to roll out the public library health offer recently piloted with SCL West Midlands. The paper also provides information on how we can support your work in the health area.
Read the full Health Offer paper and let us know if you are interested in joining us. Deadline for letting us know is 19 August.
Health and well-being toolkit
Public Libraries in the West Midlands launched a pioneering health, well-being and social care offer at NHS West Midlands' Patient Information Forum Partnership Event in Birmingham.
The offer positions public libraries as key partners for the health and social care sector, advocating the important contribution local services are making to improving the health and well being of the communities they serve. The shift of responsibility for public health from the health service to local authorities makes this a timely rallying call for the positive health benefits libraries can deliver.
You can download the toolkit from the resources column on the right hand side of this page.
New research
Commissioned by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and working with Department of Information Science at Loughborough University (LISU), we have just completed important new research. This research found that public libraries make a significant contribution to health and well-being in communities. The research was published on 21 May and the key findings include:
- There is a wide range of health and well-being activity in public libraries, some of it is being carried out in partnership with health and care partners.
- Most of the libraries that run health and well-being initiatives provide information on health, promote health and well-being and run creative activities such as reading groups.
- The evidence suggests that it is the diversity of the health and well-being activities library offer is very important. So someone might initially come into the library to find out specific information about a particular health concern but then find support from other activities the library is running, such as reading groups, leisure activities and social care support.
- Health and care partners value the fact that libraries offer people a neutral, non-stigmatised, non-clinical community space and can help them reach people that can be difficult for health care partners to contact.
- They also found libraries valuable because they could help people to access online services and had expert staff available.
The research also found that:
- The potential for libraries to work in partnership with health and social care particularly around creative community activities such as reading groups is underdeveloped.
- There needs to be more and better evidence that demonstrates the impact of libraries and health partners working together to support future partnership development
- Libraries need to build the business case which demonstrates how effective they are at delivering services that meet strategic partners' priorities including running early intervention and preventative services, providing positive outcomes for patient and saving costs.
Among the recommendations made by the research is that libraries develop a core offer, or set of activities, services and initiatives around health and well-being. The Society of Chief Librarians have recently agreed to work with us to develop that offer.
Mood-boosting Books promotion
We have worked in partnership with BBC Headroom, the campaign to support good health and destigmatise mental illness, to develop the Mood-boosting Books promotion. We asked reading groups around the country to review and identify a selection of Mood-boosting Books. The books chosen by the groups make up a booklist, which forms the centre of the promotion. The booklist is supplemented with promotional material. You can read more about the promotion here.
Reading and health skills share
We are working with several regions to run bespoke skills sharing between reading and healthcare partners. The programme focuses on sharing good practice and explores strategies that health and care partners can use that have reading at their centre.
Reading groups for older people
We are fundraising to support a pilot project with Age Concern to run a programme of social reading activity with the aim of reducing the isolation, improving the quality of life and building the social opportunities that are available to vulnerable older people. This programme would use a specially targeted package of Reading Agency creative tools such as the Six Book Challenge, reading groups and author events.
Background to reading, health and libraries
Evidence is building that reading can help to keep people well and make them better. And interest in psychological therapies that include 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.
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 Department of Health 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.
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.