The healing power of books should be taken as read

Clare Allan, author of Poppy Shakespeare and one of our guests for New Beginnings on Friday, has written about Get Into Reading in her column in the Guardian today.

As a child of academic parents, it would never have occurred to me that I needed permission to read any book (TV was a different matter), but the mental health system is packed with people who have suffered their whole lives from the failure of others to recognise and respond to them as thinking, feeling, intelligent human beings. Parents, teachers and society in general have repeatedly reinforced the message that the doors to the treasure house are barred to the likes of them. Unfortunately, much mental health treatment does little to challenge it.

Thankfully, there are signs that this is starting to change. David Fearnley, a forensic psychiatrist at Ashworth high security hospital on Merseyside, runs a Get Into Reading group with patients...

Read it in full here.