As someone who has had mental health difficulties (depression), I find the idea of a magazine for people with mental health difficulties difficult to grasp. What is it meant to do for me?

It is maybe significant that the NHS was the main purchaser, giving it away free. Whilst this may have been for clinical reasons, this is not stated, and the fact these budgets are being cut suggests this was outreach purposes (or perhaps as part of a ‘support’ programme).

The aims as stated above of the magazine are laudable, but if the clearly large potential market are not subscribing, and the NHS do not find it particularly important, why should it exist. Social Spider CIC could just use a cheaper mode of distributing the information (the internet?) with much less costs. A well-intentioned piece by Sunny, but it is worth questioning whether preserving the magazine (rather than the service) is really the way forward?

I’ve read One in Four. It’s a bloody good magazine, and it would be a great shame if it went under.

Hi Watchman,

thanks for asking such reasonable questions about One in Four.

I’m the editor of One in Four magazine. We’re a small social enterprise, so we’re outside of the NHS and the major mental health charities.

Our vision for One in Four was always to have a magazine written by people who’ve experience mental health difficulties available for free in public spaces so that anyone, mental health difficulty or not, could pick it up and take it away and read something useful and mind changing about mental health.

We think there are things about living with a mental health difficulty that you only really know about if you’ve been there. We wanted to find a way of getting information from those who had faced challenges to people who were still facing them, both passing on tips, tricks and advice and also providing a bit of hope and inspiration.

Lots of sources of advice exist, as do lots of services, but very often someone needs to know first that what they’re experiencing is something that they can get help to overcome, then they need to know what help there is available before they can go searching for the information about how to begin the process. One in Four brings all of those things together in a form that can reach people who aren’t taking those steps already.

To have a magazine that brings these things together, which is written by people with mental health difficulties with their on the ground knowledge is something that does an number of things in one neat package.

Many people going through mental health difficulties feel isolated, feel like they are the only ones facing the difficulties that they’re facing and feel bewildered by the fact that nothing seems to fit together well enough to help them through the bad stuff that they’re facing. People with mental health difficulties face the same challenges as everyone else, complicated by the mental health difficulties they experience. One in Four knows this and gives advice, news, guidance and support from that perspective.

The fact is that people need to know what information they need before they can find it on the internet, and not everyone who needs help and advice can spend ages digging through competing and contradictory online information.

If you you can see One in Four as something that firstly helps people to feel that there is help, support and ways through things and secondly helps them to find that help and support, then you’d be pretty much on the right track.

Well, that and being a really good magazine that sees things through the eyes of people who have mental health difficulties and refuse to accept that this is the end of their aspirations and hopes.

There really are very few people with mental health difficulties speaking in any sector of the media. A survey by Shift in 2006 found that only 6% of media coverage contained the voice of people with mental health difficulties (Mind Over Matter: Improving Media Reporting of Mental Health, Shift 2006): http://bit.ly/9La90K

I suppose we’re part of the next stage of mental health work, which making having a mental health difficulty an ordinary and mundane thing to talk about, showing that people with mental health difficulties aren’t ‘over there’ but are present in just about any group you’d care to mention. This type of work takes time, especially when convincing people to give you money to do it.

We’re helping the NHS by helping people with mental health difficulties to be better informed. The NHS is making a good job of this, but don’t have the way of communicating it that One in Four represents.

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

Mark

1
It is so easy to assume that all people can access the internet, in fact there are large numbers of people who find the technology frightening and many others who cannot afford to acquire the technology.
3 Hi Mark, I work for the MH Services and I have to say that I have never heard of your magazine, is your circulation limited to the London area?

Hope my other assistance has helped, Mark.

Hi Steveb,

we have circulation across various parts of the country depending on who has subscribed. If you have a look at the site you’ll see a virtual copy of the magazine.

Alisdair, it has greatly.