Mental health magazine One in Four announces closure

The next issue of mental health magazine One in Four will be the final one, but its legacy will be continued through online projects such as A Day In The Life and Doc Ready, its editor Mark Brown has announced.

One in Four was the UK’s only national magazine by and for people with mental ill health and has been published for the past 6 years. During this time, Brown has been named in The Independent on Sunday’s Happy List and the Health Service Journal’s 12 Social Media Pioneers.

Upon announcing the closure of the title, he said: “I’m happiest that One in Four has proved that a professional standard magazine written by people with mental health difficulties can exist and to have been able to publish writing by so many people with direct experience of mental health difficulty over the life of the magazine. I’m saddest that we couldn’t keep going forever.”

In his role as development director of Social Spider CIC, the social enterprise that publishes One in Four, Brown is now focusing on taking the ideas behind the magazine forward in ways that work for the social media age.

Day-to-day realities of mental health difficulties
The first project will be A Day In The Life, an online platform for people who experience mental health difficulties to write about their life experiences on four days per year. The Public Health England-funded website is inspired by initiatives such as the social research project, Mass Observation, and will be the first project of its kind to focus on mental health.

“People with mental health difficulties think that no one cares about what life is like for us,” Brown said. “A Day In The Life will provide an opportunity for policy makers and the general public to view a snapshot of our day-to-day realities.”

A Day In The Life will launch in the autumn, and follows on from Brown’s recent involvement in the creation of Doc Ready, an online app which helps young people to prepare for a visit to the GP to talk about a mental health difficulty.

Further reading: Doc Ready to young people talk to their GP about mental health