£14.00
200 in stock
By James Gerard McGinley
and John Sawkins
ISBN: 978-1-84991-727-8
Published: 2012
Pages: 72
Key Themes: Mental Health, Hope, Recovery, Empowerment
Description
Mental ill health has finally come out of the cauldron of madness and can now be seen for what it really is,a perfectly normal part of life.
James Gerard McGinley – BA Journalism
Hope Street is a new book that focuses on lived experiences, coping mechanisms, endurance, hope and recovery in the world of mental ill health.
Hope Street takes readers on an inspiring global journey, giving an insight into different mental health environments.
The book focuses on five individuals who have experienced mental ill health and are now in recovery. Most hold down full time jobs, are engaged in meaningful activities and are stronger as a result of their experiences.
More and more people around the world are coming to live on Hope Street, hence taking the first steps towards recovery. The stories, contacts, and research in this book have shown that recovery is now possible.
The writers involved in this book have bravely come forward to inspire others. Their message is simple, There is always Hope.
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James McGinley (verified owner) –
Review from SeeMe
Hope Street: Madness Defeated is an encouraging and life affirming book which serves as a fine tribute to the strength and individuality of its authors; an enjoyable and inspiring example of the hopeful approach they advocate regarding both mental illness and life in general.
One of the key messages examined in each account is the need to participate in one’s mental health; partaking actively in medical matters and treatment, reading up on mental illness and being honest about how it affects you in order to better integrate it into your life as just one of many holistic considerations. Doing so has allowed each of the five people writing in Hope Street to recover from mental illness and, in many cases, has led to them living an enriched life.
It would be wrong to say that this was just a book about mental health. It is a book about many things; different approaches to life, different parts of the world, different professions, different relationships, all expressed in different forms. Hope Street is as much a celebration of diverse and hopeful living as it is an examination of mental health. The protagonists’ approach to mental illness is simply the one unifying factor which ties the accounts together; the happy paradox that through exposing mental illness in the open, and making it a prominent consideration, it eventually becomes simply one more background element to consider in a life rich with many experiences.
The book is frank about the difficulty that can be encountered when attempting to take this approach. One story examines the old asylums that seemed more intent on punishing their inhabitants in secret for being ill than helping them, and there is honesty throughout regarding the stigma and lack of education around mental illness that the authors have found within both health services and society.
However, Hope Street also serves as an encouraging testament to how much attitudes to mental health have changed for the better over the past few decades, and the book reminds us that there are now a number of services and approaches available to support recovery from mental illness. Contact details for some of these are helpfully listed in a directory at the back of the book.
The real success of the book is the manner in which its form exemplifies the approach it advocates. Warm and generous in tone, it is assertive without being forceful and sanguine where it might have been easy to be bitter or angry. In this manner it strongly conveys its belief in shaping the present rather than dwelling in the past.
Convincingly painting a picture of a world in which an engagement and familiarity with mental health leads to fuller lives for all involved, as well as serving as a gentle mental health manifesto, Hope Street: Madness Defeated is well worth anyone’s time.
July 2012