Description

By Mark Edgar

ISBN: 978-1-78382-023-8
Published: 2012
Pages: 272
Key Themes: recovery, employment, depression, misdiagnosis, narcissistic personality disorder, psychosis

Description

Charons Ferry is intended as a sequel to A Pillar of Impotence. It is a story of life after mental health recovery set against the backdrop of a post 9.11 world. It takes the reader out of maze of the Benefits System into the struggle to find meaningful employment having lived with mental illness for more than a decade.

Throughout that process the author battled against relapse and the coming to terms with a life permanently on medication. The work follows through a career as a mental health practitioner after the chosen path of teaching failed. Slowly the voice of the author is heard in wider circles through public speaking, conferences, moving up the mental health ladder, and finally to the publication of the first book in 2011.

It is a book that should appeal to anyone with an interest in mood disorders, the Mental Health System, the Benefits System, what it is like to be on the other side of the fence, mental health recovery in general, and the battle for employment in the post recession world.

About the Author

Mark Edgar was born in Surrey in 1969. Educated as a chorister at Kings College Cambridge and a music scholar at Lancing College he returned to Cambridge in 1988 as a choral exhibitioner at Selwyn College to study History. He gained a BA Honours in 1991 despite experiencing an undiagnosed and untreated psychotic condition. In 1995 he was awarded MA.

Following many years on benefits Mark went back to Cambridge in 1999 to undertake a Post Graduate Certificate of Education and was awarded Qualified Teacher Status in 2000. Yet teaching did not work out so he became a mental health practitioner by accident working for South Kent College, Kent Social Services, and Rethink.

In 2007 Mark was appointed the very first Mental Wellbeing Advisor at the University of Hertfordshire. The role encompasses a range of areas including supporting students and staff with mental health difficulties, advising on policy, public speaking at conferences as well as teaching on a number of mental health related courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Starting writing in 1997 his poem The Archbishops Palace won the Rethink Pringles Award in 2002 and was exhibited in the Art Works in Mental Health Exhibition in 2003. He co-wrote Voicing Psychotic Experiences, a Reconsideration of Recovery and Diversity along with other services users and carers edited by Mark Hayward and Ruth Chandler in 2009. His autobiographical work A Pillar of Impotence was published in paperback in 2011.

Mark has an interest in sport, music, and is a keen amateur chef. He played American Football, coxed a boat in rowing, and played rugby in Cambridge as well as coaching for a number of years. Singing appearances are rare now but do occur from time to time.