History of One in Four

To inspire people and challenge stereotypes

The One in Four project was conceived by Mark Brown and shaped by his personal experience of mental health difficulty.

The vision was to produce a magazine that inspires people with mental health difficulties to get the best out of life while challenging stereotypes and spreading information that would help everyone to understand mental health difficulty better.

Working with his colleagues at Social Spider CIC  Mark developed One in Four as a magazine which approached mental health difficulty in a new way and challenged the stigma that people with mental health difficulties can feel; an aspirational lifestyle magazine covering common life experiences, ambitions and challenges in a way that is readable and relevant to all.

In December 2006, Social Spider secured funding from The Charlie Waller Memorial Trust and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust Charitable Funds to produce a pilot issue of One in Four to be made available free through community outlets such as GPs’ surgeries, public libraries and places of treatment.

10,000 copies were distributed and the magazine was downloaded 7,000 times from this website – an estimated total readership of around 40,000. Feedback from online and offline surveys and focus groups was overwhelmingly positive with repeated acknowledgement of the magazine’s high production values; 90% said they wanted to read future issues and 75% gave it an approval rating better than 8/10.

As a result of this response, Social Spider sought funding and developed partnerships and trading activities around the project to enable One in Four to launch as a regular quarterly magazine distributed throughout England.

The first regular quarterly issue was published in Summer 2008.  In 2010, editor Mark Brown was shortlisted for Mind Mental Health Champion of the Year for his work developing and editing One in Four.

There is currently no other independent, professionally produced magazine in the UK which is written for people with mental health difficulties and is written by them. Social Spider believes in the potential for One in Four to bring about positive change in the lives of its core audience, their friends, family and carers.

Aside from the money raised through sales of the magazine and other services One in Four is currently supported by a Comic Relief grant to develop revenue through associated social enterprise activities and the Wates Foundation to distribute a number of copies via Mind’s network of charity shops.

One in Four receives no core funding and relies on subscription revenue and other mental health related business carried out by Social Spider CIC to continue publication.