Do clinicians and patients speak the same language? How might we bridge the evident gaps in communication? How can we use narrative to foster clinical relationships? Or to care for the carers? How does illness impact upon our sense of self?

This two-day programme of talks and workshops from the Mind Reading Network was a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, UCD Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Diseases of Modern Life and Constructing Scientific Communities Projects at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Our project website and the day's programme are available here.

Together, we explored productive interactions between narrative and mental health both historically and in the present day. Bringing together psychologists, psychiatrists, GPs, service users, and historians of literature and medicine, we investigated the patient experience through the prism of literature and personal narrative to inform patient-centred care and practice, and focused on ways in which literature might be beneficial in cases of burnout and sympathy fatigue.

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