Shared Reading After Pain Rehabilitation

Chronic non-cancer pain constitutes a major challenge to society and the individual alike. Symptoms are complex and the consequences in everyday life severe. SHARP explores the effects and feasibility of Shared Reading, a group-based reading and literature promotion initiative, targeting people who have undergone a pain rehabilitation program, based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), at Skåne University Hospital, Lund.

Shared Reading – being literary and social activity – is a highly promising intervention in line with the above mentioned ACT-based rehabilitation program and hence worth exploring in the chronic non-cancer pain-context. In a Shared Reading session some ten people and a group facilitator gather weekly during 90 minutes to read out aloud and discuss literary fiction and poetry. Participants are offered dialogical interaction with literature and with their co-participants while also being part of a social context.

SHARP aims at investigating the effects of Shared Reading as an intervention for improving the quality of life for people with chronic non-cancer pain. It is an explorative, naturalistic case study. A multi-disciplinary research team will collect and analyse a range of research data: audio-video recordings of Shared Reading-group sessions, transcriptions of portions of these recordings, data from psychological questionnaires, individual audio-recorded interviews, participants’ written accounts, and psychological testing data.