Summer 2009 editorial: One

You hold in your hands the first birthday issue of One in Four.

When we came up with the idea for One in Four sitting in a greasy spoon café we knew that we had hit upon an idea that no one else had done successfully. The vision of a lifestyle magazine for people with mental health difficulties distributed to the public through community spaces and places of treatment was immediately exciting.

What we saw was a gap in what was already in existence. There was medical related advice. There was campaigning material. There were publications and journals aimed at professionals. There were, and still are, hundreds of small magazines, newsletters and publications reaching people already heavily involved in the issues. There was some coverage of mental health and wellbeing in the wider ‘mainstream’ media. There wasn’t a hopeful, useful and inspiring magazine that was easily available to everyone.

Enter One in Four, a magazine with the mission of making sure that everyone, mental health difficulty or not, understands mental health difficulties are challenges to be overcome, that life can always be better and that there are always others who have experienced similar things and found ways of making things turn out okay.

One in Four always has been and always will be written by people with mental health difficulties, for people with mental health difficulties and those that know them. It will always focus on everyday stories and experiences. It will always be independent and will always represent all that is hopeful.

One of the greatest problems that plague everything surrounding mental health and wellbeing is not a lack of knowledge but a lack of understanding. With access to the internet, with its ever growing number of information sites, support groups, blogs and discussion forums and the growing number of self help books and memoirs related to mental health, there is no lack of information. One in Four is there as a friend and as a guide. One in Four helps everyone to understand existing information and, more importantly, see how that information affects them and the people around them.

The gap that we saw three years ago is still there for us to fill. People with mental health difficulties aren’t victims.   People with mental health difficulties aren’t a different species with strange habits to be revealed to the light. People with mental health difficulties are just people who face additional challenges in getting where they want to be.

Things are changing, and we’re helping them change.

Thanks must go to everyone who has written for One in Four, who has subscribed, who has convinced organisations to take out subscriptions to One in Four, has talked or written about One in Four, funded One in Four and most importantly everyone who has read One in Four and contacted us.

We’ve only just begun to see what this magazine can do.

Mark Brown
Editor

This editorial first appeared in the Summer 2009 edition of One in Four magazine

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