A patient once said to me: ‘Thank you for reminding me that I can feel’

Sue Colbourn helped establish a Shared Reading partnership between The Reader and Prospect Park, an NHS psychiatric hospital in Berkshire, 14 years ago – and it is still going strong. The now retired Reader-in-Residence shares what it has meant to aid the recovery of hundreds of mental health patients.

“Many years ago, I remember an in-patient who tried to come to my Shared Reading group for weeks. Full of angst they only managed to sit down for a few moments before continuing their agitated wanderings around the ward.

Gradually this person grew able to relax enough to nod off to sleep in the session, which was honestly a relief to see. Eventually they began to fully attend each week, really interested in whatever we were reading.

One day they told me how much they enjoyed the group and that their daughter had brought them in a book. The following week there they were, book in hand reading as they waited for the rest of the group to arrive.

Then they spoke to me, saying: ‘You’ve got me back into reading and I haven’t read a book for 50 years’. It was the 50 years that got me – a lifetime! My hope is that reading will continue to be part of that person’s life.

Initially the partnership with Prospect Park began in 2010 with a weekly Shared Reading group Orchid Ward, which at that time was a long-term rehabilitation ward at the hospital.

The fact that we have been funded since 2012, through times of financial difficulty, really is testament to what Shared Reading is seen to be doing for in-patients at the hospital.

Now there are four weekly groups: one in the Therapy Centre which draws from four acute wards; a group on Orchid Ward, which now is an acute ward for older adults, and another group on Rowen Ward for patients with a dementia diagnosis.

A fourth group runs online for patients on Sorrel Ward, an intensive care ward.

We also have volunteer-led community groups – like many others The Reader runs across the UK - at Wokingham Library, Reading Central Library and one hopefully soon in Slough. These are open community groups but also where we direct people after they are discharged from hospital.

Over the years I have worked with fantastic staff at Prospect Park. There is no doubt in my mind Shared Reading would not be so embedded without their unfailing support, commitment and belief in The Reader’s work.

Everyone in the therapy team knows about Shared Reading either because they’ve been to a group or attended one of my quarterly workshops.

I have welcomed a range of staff to groups over the years from student psychologists, to nursing staff on the wards to the person who used to collect the tea trolley early to catch a poem.

Staff come to see what it’s all about sometimes, I think, to observe but they end up totally absorbed as they start to discover those connections through the literature with other people in the group.

Maybe it’s powerful because staff attend in a professional capacity so it may come as a surprise to discover something that affects and hits them in a personal way.

I have found people in this setting, in their varying degrees of unwellness, appreciate the honesty of good literature that deals with something true, relatable and human.

People often find something within that model of human experience in a poem or story that touches them, which is hardly surprising. One group member once said to me: ‘thank you for reminding me that I can feel’.

Someone recently added a bit more to their thank you. They said: ‘This has been helping me in ways I cannot even say’. It’s that tip of the iceberg thing, an indication of something really important happening deep down.

Very often I hear people say: ‘I can imagine reading working well in a hospital as I love to escape into a book’. What we read in Shared Reading groups does take us to a different place, but I wouldn't say it was an escape, more a breathing space where people can explore and find something for themselves.

To steal Jeanette Winterson’s phase from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal - as I often do: ‘The literature isn’t a hiding place; it’s a finding place’.”

To listen to this interview in full go to The Reader Podcast recorded especially at Prospect Park Hospital in Berkshire here.

Sue Colbourn was The Reader’s Reader-in-Residence running Shared Reading groups for patients and staff at Prospect Park, an NHS psychiatric hospital and mental health unit covering Berkshire, for 14 years. She retired in the summer of 2024. Emily Wright is now continuing the role, two days a week.

Listen to The Reader Podcast in full here.