I’ve re-blogged this post from The Reader Online (the blog of The Reader Organisation). It’s an inspiring and uplifting first-person story about how coming to a shared reading group, to read and talk about books, improved the well-being of a man experiencing mental health problems. The Reader Organisation is a national charity that sets up shared reading groups in settings such as schools, libraries, care homes, prisons and other places.
Shad has been coming to Book Break, one of our shared reading groups, for two years. He is Kurdish, originally from the north of Iraq.
This is Shad’s story, in his own words.
This is Shad’s story, in his own words.
I’m very ill, sleeping all day if there is nothing to go to. I get up for the group because it is something to get up for.
My childhood, my problem started when I was four or five years old. I stayed away from groups. Coming to this country was not easy, it was completely different. Book Break is the first group I have been to in my whole life! I was talking to my occupational therapist and he said “We have a Book Break”. I like reading; it is a hobby, I like education and to study. I enjoyed reading as a kid. That was my enjoyment as a child. I wanted to know things. In my…
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Josephine Corcoran 
Uplifting. Thank you Shad for writing this. On a day when I was feeling ground down by the weather, it has taken me out of myself.
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I found it very moving, Madeleine.
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