Here you may learn about the science and literature behind (and about!) mental health & heritage.
Feel free to browse our monthly book and poem recommendations as well as the news/reports section, which includes reports and articles on this fascinating world.
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Click HERE to see the book and poem recommendations from 2023
by Sara Nisha Adams
An unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb.
by Samuel Johnson
Rasselas, son of the King of Abyssinia, is shut up in a beautiful valley, "till the order of succession should call him to the throne." He grows weary of the factitious entertainments of the place, and after much brooding escapes with his sister Nekayah, her attendant Pekuah and his poet-friend Imlac. They are to see the world and search for happiness, frequent various classes of society and undergo quite a few adventures.
by Victoria Sweet
San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God’s hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves—“anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times” and needed extended medical care—ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for twenty years.
Laguna Honda, relatively low-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished. Gradually, the place transformed the way she understood her work. Alongside the modern view of the body as a machine to be fixed, her extraordinary patients evoked an older idea, of the body as a garden to be tended. God’s Hotel tells their story and the story of the hospital itself, which, as efficiency experts, politicians, and architects descended, determined to turn it into a modern “health care facility,” revealed its own surprising truths about the essence, cost, and value of caring for the body and the soul.
by Magnus Fridh
When life is moving at a breakneck pace or when at times we're confronted with almost unreasonable demands clogging up our calendars, it can seem as if we have no time left to simply do nothing. Spending more time surrounded by calmness, resting and recovering, gives us the space to really process experiences, make sense of what we're feeling, and put a good distance between us and all the things on our to do list. What's more, this also makes us more present and able to devote our energy to the things that are important in life. Simply sitting in silence every once in a while, without moving, doing nothing, might just be the smartest choice you make in the world we live in. In The Art of Stillness in a Noisy World, meditation and yoga expert, Magnus Fridh, will help you find the calmness amidst the stresses of everyday life, helping you to become more present in a world where we seem to becoming ever more absent.
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A pilot stranded in the desert awakes one morning to see, standing before him, the most extraordinary little fellow. "Please," asks the stranger, "draw me a sheep." And the pilot realizes that when life's events are too difficult to understand, there is no choice but to succumb to their mysteries. He pulls out pencil and paper... And thus begins this wise and enchanting fable that, in teaching the secret of what is really important in life, has changed forever the world for its readers.
by Jessica Baum
A road map for building strong and secure relationships for those who struggle with anxiety in their romantic connections.
Developed over ten years in private practice, Baum's signature Self-full® Method has helped her clients get off the toxic roller coaster of anxious attachment and discover the secure and mutually supportive relationships they deserve. In this book readers will learn how Anxiously Attached offers a practical and holistic approach for overcoming anxious attachment issues to discover happier, more fulfilling relationships.
by Laurie Lee
Cider With Rosie is a charming memoir of Laurie Lee's childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a world that is tangibly real and yet reminiscent of a now distant past.
In this idyllic pastoral setting, unencumbered by the callous father who so quickly abandoned his family responsibilities, Laurie's adoring mother becomes the centre of his world as she struggles to raise a growing family against the backdrop of the Great War.
The sophisticated adult author's retrospective commentary on events is endearingly juxtaposed with that of the innocent, spotty youth, permanently prone to tears and self-absorption.
by Peter Daybell
With a Smile and a Wave provides a vivid picture of the squalor and danger of war, the backbreaking hardship of trench life and of the challenges of pioneer air fighting. It draws extensively on Captain Liddell's own letters and diaries and exposes the character and courage of the man in his own often compelling and moving words. But it is a story not just of war, but of growing up in a devout and prosperous family, of a Jesuit education at Stonyhurst College, and of Edwardian Oxford before the Great War. It portrays the privileged lifestyle of the English country gentleman, and describes how a very close knit and patriotic family dealt with the adversity of war.
by Ernest Hemingway
This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and a giant Marlin —specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.
by David Lodge
Paradise, tourist style. It's a very long way from home. Bernard Walsh is in Hawaii on family business, escorting his querulous father to the bedside of a long-forgotten aunt. His mission transports him from quiet obscurity in Rummridge, England, to a lush tropical playground, from cloistered solitude into the unfamiliar company of package tourists: honeymooners; young women looking for Mr. Nice; families nuclear and fissile. But it is the island itself that holds the most astonishing surprises, as an accidental encounter opens up to Bernard possibilities of life, and love, never dreamed of in his normally overcast habitat. Paradise News is an enchanting--and very funny--portrait of the late flowering of an honest man.
by Mitch Albom
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?
Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.
by Chris Van Allsburg
Late one Christmas Eve after the town has gone to sleep, the boy boards the mysterious train that waits for him: the Polar Express bound for the North Pole. When he arrives, Santa offers the boy any gift he desires. The boy modestly asks for one bell from the harness of the reindeer. The gift is granted. On the way home the bell is lost. On Christmas morning, the boy finds the bell under the tree. The mother of the boy admires the bell, but laments that it is broken—for you see, only believers can hear the sound of the bell.
The Museums, Health and Social Care Resource suggests heritage activities and identifies how these activities could specifically support quality of life, health and wellbeing in older people.
learn more
Nature Mental Health is a monthly online-only journal publishing original, peer-reviewed research from the breadth of sciences exploring mental health and mental health disorders.
learn more
Heritage is inextricably linked to mental health and well-being, often generating positive emotions and a sense of connection, but also capable of triggering distress, trauma and negative memories.
The report summarises our work using cohort study data to explore the impact of the arts on population health
A UKRI MARCH Network Plus funded project, carried out between November 2020 and May 2021, in partnership with Historic England, saw an expert panel develop best practice guidelines for organisations offering heritage projects as interventions for people who live with mental health issues.
This report commissioned by the Baring Foundation and produced by the Restoration Trust showcases work from 18 heritage and arts organisations using a wealth of heritage assets, and the creativity of artists, to improve mental health and community connections.
The National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) has published an evidence note briefly looking at the link between mental health and social prescribing.
This paper presents a first, comprehensive realist review of wellbeing benefits and pathways through which those emerge. Benefits related to exposure to or engagement with historic places are discussed, attempting a classification of academic papers and empirical published studies, according to various types of place experiences (range from experiencing to living in a historic environment).
The global “COVID-19” pandemic resulted in national lockdowns and the closure of museums to visitors. The pandemic had considerable negative impact on individual, community, and society wellbeing and changed museum practice, specifically through increased online presence. This pilot research sought to start to understand the impact online museum provisions had on individual wellbeing during the pandemic.
This paper describes a collaborative research partnership between museum educators and art therapists. Twenty-two visitors at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum were randomly assigned to either a control group or an experimental group based on an art therapy informed protocol. Those in the experimental group created art based on their emotional response to the exhibition contents, engaged in reflective writing and participated in a discussion group.
The empty former cottage hospital of Winsford is a building like no other in the world. The result of a philanthropic dream shared by a rich widow and a leading Victorian architect, in the 119 years since the ailing people of north Devon were first welcomed under its slate roof, the place has aided many a recovery, including shell-shocked soldiers seeking sanctuary from first world war trenches.
This article reports a cross-disciplinary literature review focused to identify if and how history and heritage have been linked with public health.
Widely varied opinions suggest history, heritage, and historic places are valuable assets for improving the human condition.
The Australian Government Intergenerational Report 2023 projects that the population of Australia will age over the next 40 years. Rather than viewing this as a problem, we should recognise this as a time of unprecedented opportunity to tap into a vast human reservoir of wisdom, experience, and optimism.
Activities, social networks, and technology use helped mitigate the health effects of social isolation during COVID-19
We estimate the direct causal effect of loneliness on a variety of health outcomes using a sample of second-generation immigrants among older adults drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. In an effort to account for the endogeneity of self-declared loneliness, we explore the link between loneliness and a specific trait of maternal cultural background strongly associated with quality of relations and use the latter as an instrument for loneliness
All sinopses (from the Monthly Book Recommendation section) have been retrieved from www.goodreads.com
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