Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
One in Four

One in Four

Ford, J.

Paperback

Self Help

ISBN10: 1847471730
ISBN13: 9781847471734
Publisher: Chipmunkapub
Published: Feb 2 2007
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.47
Height: 0.44 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
By Joy Ford

ISBN: 978-1-84747-173-4
Published: 2007
Pages: 190
Key Themes: carer's story, grief, poetry, schizophrenia, mental health services, suicide

With this book I want people to realise that even if you do manage to get help for a loved one who has become seriously mentally ill, it does not mean they are safe from harming themselves. Hospitals are only as good as the staff that run them. 'Care In The Community' is very spasmodic, especially in rural areas. I also want people to realise that seriously mentally ill people are not people to fear, they want to feel, and be treated as 'normal' like everyone else. - Joy Ford

Description

'One In Four' uses a mixture of prose and poetry to tell the important and tragic story of a teenage boy who becomes seriously mentally ill, with paranoid schizophrenia, from a mother's point of view. It travels with her and her son through the quagmire of 'Care In The Community' and the problems of living on the cusp of two counties. This excellent narrative shows how people can slip through the net, leading, in this instance, to the death of a very much loved child, brother, and grandson. Joy's son did not want to die, it was the illness that killed him, aggravated by the neglect of the hospital he was in. The story travels through the effect this tragedy has had on the mother and the struggle she has coming to terms with the loss of her son. This is a wonderfully poignant, if emotionally involving book. A fitting memorial to Edward.

About the Author

I found writing this cathartic though upsetting at times. It brought back my troubled childhood, though I do not go into detail in my book, and a difficult twenty-five year marriage. The highlights in my life were also remembered; three years studying art, my teenage years in the sixties when I felt free and had fun. The birth of my three beautiful children, and the love I feel for them, the publication of my first book in 1985 and several poems over the years. Meeting a man who accepts me for who and what I am with no expectations, my lovely grandchildren and extended family. Sweet memories of my youngest child, but also the pain of him not being in my life, something that will always be with me. As I am beginning to heal I want to be able to support mentally sick people in some way, and am hoping to help in an art and craft group with the Gemini Project in Oxford.

Book Extract

THE BEGINNING

Scared of rejection

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