Warwick launches new course on Literature and mental health

Warwick University has launched the world’s first free online course exploring Literature in mental health.

“Literature and Mental Health: Reading for Wellbeing” is available on the FutureLearn platform and is in association with ReLit, a foundation dedicated to ‘bibliotherapy,’ or the wellbeing benefits of great literature.

The course features interviews with Sir Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and Melvyn Bragg, who discuss how forms of literature such as poetry, plays and novels can help people cope with and understand times of deep emotional strain.

The themes explored include stress, heartbreak, bereavement, trauma, depression and bipolar, ageing and dementia.

Delivering the course are Sir Jonathan Bate, Honorary Fellow of Creativity at Warwick Business School and Honorary Professor in the University’s English and Comparative Literary Studies department, and Dr Paula Byrne, best-selling author and fellow of creativity at Warwick Business School.

Bate explained that great literature “has always been one of humankind’s richest resources for making sense of difficult experiences and living through painful times

“[It] can serve us all as ‘safe places’ for reflection and de-stressing in a busy world.”

The course will begin on February 1 and over 9,000 people have already subscribed.

Learners will spend approximately four hours a week on course material including videos, readings, activities, discussions and online conversations, however they are not limited to a week-by-week frame and can learn at their own pace.

The course is reflective of recent efforts by both the University and Students’ Union (SU) to raise awareness of mental health.

This year’s RAG week raised over £2,000 for mental health charity Mind, and the SU has launched the “It’s OK” campaign dedicated to helping students struggling with adjusting to university life.

The Boar contacted several Warwick students about their response to the course, all of whom have suffered from mental health conditions and have wished to remain anonymous.

One student responded that she was “glad to see Warwick offering further opportunities for people to explore mental health, in keeping with the other mental health initiatives they and the SU have introduced this year.”

However, several students felt that it misses an opportunity in “humanising unusual experiences.”

One student said that although the course appears interesting, it risks becoming a “sanist generalised campaign, which popularises a narrow narrative of such illnesses that don’t taken into account the narrative of the actual people who experience these conditions.”

The course is the latest in a series of free online courses run by the University that attract approximately 16,000 learners from around the world.