For immediate release 7th July 2011
The trailblazing lifestyle magazine for people with mental health difficulties One in Four celebrates its 3rd birthday this month. Written by people with mental health difficulties, for people with mental health difficulties as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia with a distribution of 10,000 copies per quarterly issue, One in Four is a kind of social enterprise project that hasn’t existed before.
Social Spider CIC, the small London-based social enterprise that publishes One in Four have taken significant risks in getting One in Four to where it is now, a magazine with a significant readership that is changing how people see mental health difficulty.
Conceived and edited by Mark Brown, development director of Social Spider CIC and a person with mental health difficulties himself, the project has drawn praise while battling against the idea that people with mental health difficulties can’t do things for themselves and with a continual struggle to keep afloat during worsening economic conditions.
Says Mark Brown: “Sometimes I can’t believe we’ve managed to keep going. Breaking new ground with next to no money isn’t the easiest way to run a magazine.”
Mark Brown was shortlisted for Champion of the Year 2011 by mental health charity Mind for his work on One in Four. Says Mark: “I came to the world of mental health first as some one trying to find a way through my own difficulties. In three years we’ve moved from people who had a good idea to developing new thinking, leading conferences and taking forward a new view of mental health. It’s been a process that has involved deep lows and significant highs and which has taken me into areas that I would never have predicted for myself during my years of unemployment due to illness. It’s often taken me close to my limits.”
Social Spider CIC, the small London-based social enterprise that publishes One in Four have taken significant risks in getting One in Four to where it is now, a magazine with a significant readership that is changing how people see mental health difficulty.
Says Mark: “We’ve seen mental health publications start up, survive for a short time then disappear. It’s not an easy thing to get right. Doing something like a national magazine for people with mental health difficulties that isn’t an NHS project or a project carried out by a major charity was quite hard for people to get their heads around. There’s been a lot of times where our business heads have told us to stop but our passion for mental health has kept us going.”
Building on the experience of One in Four the company is developing other mental health related projects, including thinking about the future of mental health in ‘The Big Society’. Social Spider CIC is working on a report about mental health and Big Society commissioned by The NHS Confederation to be published later this summer.
Says Mark: “Through doing the magazine we’ve learned so much, met so many people and had so many conversations. We see our job as keeping hope alive. There’s a definite ‘next wave’ of thinking about mental health around the corner but it’s one that’s threatened by cuts.”
Notes to editors
- Mark Brown is available for interview on his own experiences as editor of One in Four, his thoughts on what’s next for mental health and his thoughts on what effects Big Society may have on the lives of people with mental health difficulties. He can be contacted on mark@socialspider.com or 020 8521 2264 / 077 2852 0116. He is @markoneinfour on twitter.
- One in Four is a quarterly, England-wide magazine for people with mental health difficulties. It is published by Social Spider CIC. www.socialspider.com. Each issue contains a mixture of features, news and information that supports recovery, signposts services and communicates health messages in an accessible style. One in Four empowers people, gives them hope and combats exclusion, discrimination and stigma.One in Four is distributed throughout England and is available in GP surgeries, libraries, universities, Mind shops and similar venues. You can find out more about One in Four, read selected articles from current issues and buy a copy online at www.oneinfourmag.org
- One in Four is available through subscription. One in Four can be purchased as an individual subscription and organisations can by copies in bulk at reduced prices. Both forms of subscription are available via the One in Four website www.oneinfourmag.org
- The editor, Mark Brown, experiences mental health difficulties himself. (See The Guardian interview with Mark: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/29/one-in-four-mental-health)
