How Literature Can Improve Mental Health: Take a Free Course Featuring Stephen Fry, Ian McKellen, Melvyn Bragg & More

The great 18th cen­tu­ry writer Dr. Samuel John­son, who suf­fered from severe bouts of depres­sion, said “the only end of writ­ing is to enable the read­er bet­ter to enjoy life or bet­ter to endure it.”

So…is it true? Can a poem help you cope with grief? Can a son­net stir your soul to hope?

The Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick have teamed up with some famous faces, and a team of doc­tors to tack­le these ques­tions and oth­ers like them, in a free online course on Future­Learn.

Poets, writ­ers and actors like Stephen Fry, Ian McK­ellen, Melvyn Bragg, Mark Had­don (The Curi­ous Inci­dent of the Dog in the Night Time), Ben Okri (The Fam­ished Road), Rachel Kel­ly (Black Rain­bow) and oth­ers, will dis­cuss their own work and the work of famous writ­ers like Austen, Shake­speare and Wordsworth — explor­ing how they can impact men­tal health and why works of writ­ing are so often turned to in times of cri­sis.

Here’s Stephen Fry on the plea­sure of poet­ry:

Plus through­out the 6‑week course doc­tors will offer a med­ical per­spec­tive, giv­ing an insight into dif­fer­ent men­tal health con­di­tions.

The course is offered through Future­Learn which means it’s bro­ken into chunks — so you can do it step by step. Future­Learn also fea­tures lots of dis­cus­sion so you can share your ideas with oth­er learn­ers, which often can be as ben­e­fi­cial as the course mate­r­i­al (as one pre­vi­ous learn­er put it “a real­ly won­der­ful expe­ri­ence and I’ve loved the feed­back and com­ments from fel­low course mem­bers”).

Here’s a run­through of what’s on the syl­labus. The course focus­es on six themes:

1. Stress: In poet­ry, the word “stress” refers to the empha­sis of cer­tain syl­la­bles in a poem’s metre. How might the met­ri­cal “stress­es” of poet­ry help us to cope with the men­tal and emo­tion­al stress­es of mod­ern life?
2. Heart­break: Is heart­break a med­ical con­di­tion? What can Sidney’s son­nets and Austen’s Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty teach us about suf­fer­ing and recov­er­ing from a bro­ken heart?
3. Bereave­ment: The psy­chol­o­gist Elis­a­beth Kübler-Ross famous­ly pro­posed that there are five stages of grief. How might Shakespeare’s Ham­let and poems by Wordsworth and Hardy help us to think dif­fer­ent­ly about the process of griev­ing?
4. Trau­ma: PTSD or “shell­shock” has long been asso­ci­at­ed with the trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences of sol­diers in World War 1. How is the con­di­tion depict­ed in war poet­ry of the era? Can poems and plays offer us an insight into oth­er sources of trau­ma, includ­ing mis­car­riage and assault?
5. Depres­sion and Bipo­lar: The writer Rachel Kel­ly sub­ti­tles her mem­oir Black Rain­bow “how words healed me – my jour­ney through depres­sion”. Which texts have peo­ple turned to dur­ing peri­ods of depres­sion, and why? What can we learn from lit­er­a­ture about the links between bipo­lar dis­or­der and cre­ativ­i­ty?
6. Age­ing and Demen­tia: One of the great­est stud­ies of age­ing in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture is Shakespeare’s King Lear. Is it help­ful to think about this play in the con­text of demen­tia? Why are suf­fer­ers of age-relat­ed mem­o­ry loss often still able to recall the poems they have learned “by heart”?

Start the course for free today.

Jess Weeks is a copy­writer at Future­Learn. The one poem which helps her endure is The Orange by Wendy Cope.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Book Read­ers Live Longer Lives, Accord­ing to New Study from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy