August

The chipmunka group is launched at www.chipmunka.com. Look out for stunning new social enterprises based on the Chipmunkapublishing empowerment model. The Chipmunka foundation website goes live www.chipmunkafoundation.org. you can make a donation to the charity online.

July

Chipmunkapublishing launches 15 new e-books, with a further 100 in the process of editing and proof reading. We also start asking for more manuscripts of those people who would not be heard.

June 2005

Chipmunkapublishing goes global. CEO Jason Pegler has recently given interviews in Spain, Australia and the United States. Taking on new manuscripts from around the world including South Africa.

May 2005

The Chipmunka Foundation is now a registered charity. Charity Registration number is 1109537. The project has been pioneered by founders of Chipmunkapublishing Jason Pegler, Andrew Latchford and Paul Brandwood, from KPMG. A big thank you to everyone including Robert bond from Faegre Benson Hobson and Audley for his pro bono support.

April 2005

April is a very pro active month for Chipmunka. We have released 10 newe-books taking our portfolio to 45 books including paperbacks and e-books. We had e-book launch for Anne Brocklesby's Move Over Manic Depression Here I am and Rosamund McCullimain's the Dispossessed. Look out for our CEO Jason Pegler appearing on the Community Channel in May and the Discovery Channel. In both films Jason talks about writing as catharsis and publishing as empowerment. On Saturday 30th of April there is a double page feature on CEO Jason Pegler in the Mind body and SOul section of the Times. Don't miss it

March 2005

At an awards ceremony at the Dahli Museum on the evening of the 2nd of March our Co Founder and CEO Jason Pegler was announced as the winner of the New Statesman's Upstarts Award of "Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award". Follow the link: http://www.newstatesman.co.uk
to discover what the judges said about the achievements of Chipmunkapublishing. At the reception there were nearly 200 people from the social enterprise sector. Channel 4 TV Presenter announced the winner and Nigel Griffiths MP and Head of the DTI presented the awards.

February 2005

In February 2005 We moved to new offices in EC4 in Central London. Chipmunkapublishing's New Office address is Sixth Floor, Sir John Lyon House Business Centre, 5 High Timber Street, London, EC4V 3NX. Chipmunkapublishing would like to thank John Bird and Paul Williams of MLS Business Centres for making this happen.

January 2005

Happy New Year From the Chipmunka Press Office. Jason Pegler has been shortlisted for the New Statesman's Upstart Awards 2005 in the Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award category alongside celebrity chef Jamie Oliver: newstatesman
Look out for forthcoming reviews of our books in the Observer and Daily Mail. Other features expected include Men's Health Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Now Magazine. Our CEO Jason Pegler will be appearing on the Discovery Channel in The discovery channel will be at 8.30pm on the 24th of February. We are also on stand bye for Richard and Judy and Breakfast on BBC 1 after previous cancellations due to breaking news.

December 2004

Chipmunkapublishing has been busily reading through manuscripts. We have a shortlist of 60 books to choose from. Competition is fierce this time around. There are so many good stories to tell. We have been working closely with the book trade to try and get our books in stock in book shops throughout the world. This is a tough process but the Mental Health Survivor's Publisher will not give in and Chipmunka will become the World's First Mental Health Brand.

November 2004

November has been has been a time of organic growth for the Chipmunka Foundation, Chipmunkapublishing and Equal Lives our sister social enterprise. The Foundation has been busily putting in undressing bids, Equal Lives has been distributing books on mental health and the publishing company has just launched Fiona Whelpton's "The Cycle Path" - a remarkable semi autobiographical story about a woman who suffers from conversion syndrome disorder and manages to overcome it.

October 2004

In October 2004 we set up the Chipmunka Foundation which aims to become the world's largest mental health charity. With three founder members - Jason Pegler and Andrew Latchford, founders of Chipmunkapublishing and Nigel Kershaw - Chairman of the Big Issue and a strategic committee of committed people involved from key circles of influence in the charity, social enterprise and business sector. Chairman of the board is Paul Brandwood - Head of Operations at KPMG UK.

September 2004

CEO of Chipmunkapublishing appears on BBC One discussing patient's right on the mental health bill, visits 10 downing street and the House of Commons with Mind and the Chipmunka Foundation launches its first Fundraising bids. £3 million worth of fundraising bids put in so far. Also global humanitarian grant application made.

August 2004

CEO of Chipmunkapublishing appears on BBC 1 News and live on BBC News 24 in a four minute interview discussing results to the Health Commission's Patients Survey 2004.

The Patients survey interviewed 300,000 people on what they thought of the NHS. Mental health patients were interviewed for the first time. This is a welcome step even though the mental health section had the lowest turnout of 42%. Chipmunka supports the government and endeavours to change society who has taken 2000 years to engage mental health patients in meaningful conversation.

During his four minute live interview on BBC 24 Jason Pegler made reference to Martin Luther King. "if Martin Luther King was a white man talking about black rights nobody would have listened to him". The same is true with mental health. We will see a shift in world consciousness as Bob Geldof did at Live Aid. The same will happen in mental health and Chipmunka will be one of the driving forces. This is only a matter of time.

CEO of Chipmunkapublishing Appears On ITV London News

2/7/04

Last week according to the BBC there was a split between Michael Howard and Tony Blair on the forthcoming general elections. The split was on the health service. Tony Blair wants to improve the NHS and Michael Howard wants "freedom of choice" i.e. to privatise hospitals. As they manoeuvre for what is traditionally the biggest vote winner which is The Health Service I was invited onto "The Week" on ITV today on Sunday. There was a four minute film about Care in The Community and whether it is working or not prompted by St Luke's Hospital Group sponsoring the book 21st Century Asylums in which I write an essay of my vision for the future of mental health services. I was in the studio with the Chief Executive of St Luke's Hospital Group Jackie Flatts and Alison Shea from Mencap. Alison focused on the importance of good care and raising the profile for people with learning disability. I discussed the need for patients to be treated as human beings first and foremost as well as the fact that mental health is becoming a social norm. What concerns me and most people with mental health issues is not whether care takes place in a private or public hospital but but how it is administered.

When questioned I stated that people need to be treated as individuals not as inanimate objects.

June 2004: Chipmunkapublishing Announces Second Patron

Chipmunkapublishing is proud to announce a new patron, Adele Blakeborough‘Co-Founder and Executive Director of CAN(Community Action Network).

Adele Blakeborough is one of Britain's best known social entrepreneurs. A former director of the Kaleidoscope drugs project in Kingston upon Thames, she co-founded the Community Action Network in 1998.

“I'm delighted to be a patron for Chipmunkapublishing. This is precisely the kind of social entrepreneurial project Community Action Network was set up to celebrate and support. The area of mental health is fraught with social stigma, fear and misunderstanding. Chipmunkapublishing is being created by someone with direct experience of mental health problems to highlight and relieve these issues.”

Adele joins John Bird(Co-founder of the Big Issue) as another high profile supporter of Chipmunka's work.

Chipmunka Latest May 2004:

Chipmunkapublishing Announces its first Patron:

John Bird: the founder of The Big Issue.

Chipmunkapublishing continues to work with like minded organisations. The Big Issue is a wonderful example of social enterprise. Homeless people are as much human beings and deserve the opportunity to empower themselves just as people with "mental illness". Thank you John.

Since our foundation in April 2002 Chipmunkapublishing and its authors have received significant local, national and now international media coverage. Here is a sample of some of our success.

Press Highlights

Guardian Society: "Glad to be a mad media mogul" (page 4 col 1)

Manic-depressive author who aims to be the next Branson

Author Jason Pegler, who is behind the first publishing house entirely devoted to promoting work by people with mental illness "Pegler, 28, set up Chipmunkapublishing to encourage and empower other survivors of mental illness, after realising that writing his own autobiography about living with manic depression saved his life. And he has grand ambitions for the project. "I want Chipmunkapublishing to be the brand that the public associates with mental health, like the Big Issue has done for the homeless. Ideally, I would want it to go further, to be the Virgin of mental health."

http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story

/0,7843,1190886,00.html

MANIC ATTACK
December 2003 – Sunday Times Style Magazine

Often, manic depression strikes high-achievers, and when they least expect it. Jason Pegler tells Anita Chaudhuri how it happened to him.

As I was being driven off in the back of a police van in a space suit, I thought I was DJ Donovan 'Bad Boy' Smith being driven to a rave. I could hear music in my head. I thought back to how, the previous night, I had woken up my stepmother while my dad was on a night shift. I had entered their bedroom wearing my father's fire uniform — fully equipped with his boots, waterproofs, helmet and gas mask. She screamed as I turned on the light. What happened after that, I fail to remember. All I recall is my dad telling me I was going to a place where they would take care of me. This was great and was all in line with my theory. I found his tears comforting. It must have been a very emotional experience to realise that he was the father of God."
Meet Jason Pegler, straight-As student, star of the rugby team and school chess champion. At 17, he experienced his first episode of manic depression. Pegler acknowledges that before this, he had not had an easy time at school. "There were psychologically traumatising incidents. The other boys didn't like me for several reasons. I had lots of freckles and a bad haircut, for starters. I would score more goals than everyone else put together in every football match. I beat them all at chess, spelling, reading and writing and even Top Trumps: I had a photographic memory for learning numbers, so I knew which category to pick on each card."
Following his first spell of mania and subsequent black tunnel of despair, Pegler was eventually well enough to go to Manchester University to read classics. Despite showing great academic promise, he soon embarked on a career of alcohol and drug abuse, bar fights and womanising, all, he now concedes, fuelled by his fear of having another episode. "As I saw it, if I was always ‘acting’ crazy, I couldn't go crazy again. I was a manic depressive with a classic case of denial. It became difficult for me to socialise, my university work was being neglected and my overdraft was steadily increasing."
Pegler's excessive lifestyle ended one night when he realised that he could save the world from an impending nuclear war. "At 4am. I thought I'd call Snoop Dogg to ask for his help. There was an emergency number on the back of the Doggystyle CD cover. I rang the number and it didn't matter that I couldn't speak to anyone, as my powers of telepathy had returned. I had never been so happy — not even during my first manic episode."
A second spell in hospital followed, where his consultant wanted to try electro convulsive therapy, but Pegler had seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, where Jack Nicholson is given the electric-shock treatment; he flatly refused.
He was released, but suffered another relapse after finishing his finals. Pegler, like the majority of manic depressives, was being treated with lithium, but without adequate information. For example, he believes his relapses were caused by the levels of lithium in his blood dropping too low — nobody had told him that binge drinking could cause this.
After graduating, he moved to London to pursue a career in the media, but after completing a journalism course and a brief spell writing for a magazine, he suffered his most serious manic episode yet. "My brother said that I was behaving oddly. I fried and ate 24 eggs and washed my hair with a can of cold Heinz tomato soup. I also fixed the cat a fried breakfast and threw all my CDs around the flat, because I thought they were flying saucers that would act as boomerangs. I thought the flat was turning into Noah's ark and I was Noah, so I set about my business. I left the bath water running and made a bridge down the stairs, throwing everything I could find down it."
Fortunately, Pegler's girlfriend supported him through a lengthy recovery period and he has since begun to manage the illness more successfully with a combination of drugs and anti-relapse therapies. Pegler, now 28, works as a mental-health activist and has set up his own publishing company, Chipmunka, to give a voice to young sufferers.
Manic depression is a condition that affects an estimated 600,000 British people. Like many others with bipolar affective disorder (the medical term for manic depression), Pegler has a family history of the disease. However, there is still a very random element attached to developing the condition. "Manic depression is like the flu," explains Pegler. "It can come and go at any time and it's hard to say why. There is no cure for it, only a series of attempts to try and stabilise patients." Most sufferers are prescribed lithium, which can be highly effective but is also notoriously difficult to regulate — stress, alcohol and diet are known to play havoc with its levels in the bloodstream.
According to the mental-health charity Mind, manic depression manifests itself with episodes of mania or elation followed by a low mood or depression. Until the first episode of mania, the condition will generally not be diagnosed. The number of manic and depressive episodes varies greatly from person to person and most individuals experience "normal" periods between their manic and depressive times. It often first occurs when work, study, family or emotional pressure are at their greatest, but it can happen out of the blue to anyone of either sex at any age.
Recent research conducted at the Bipolar Disorders Clinic at Stanford University, California, indicates that highly creative, sensitive people, with a tendency towards perfectionism and high achievement — like Pegler — have a greater incidence of bipolar affective disorder.
"It is particularly difficult for the families and friends of sufferers, because they have to watch the person going through a depression, which is painful and distressing enough, and then mania, where behaviour tends to be uncharacteristic and unpredictable," says Rhian Thomas, of Mind. During the manic phase, sufferers often display an inflated sense of self-importance, have a decreased need for sleep and may indulge in excessive involvement in activities that can bring pleasure but may have disastrous consequences (such as sexual affairs and spending excessively).
Pegler would like to end the stigma surrounding the condition. "The Samaritans estimate that as many as 12m people in the UK are taking antidepressants, yet for many, admitting to suffering from depression is something shameful," he says. This was made all too clear two years ago, when his close friend Tom Robertson took his own life. He didn't even tell Pegler, a fellow sufferer, of his illness. "I didn't find out that he had a mental illness until the day of his funeral."

PUBLISH OR BE DAMNED
Setting up his own publishing house gave Jason Pegler a way of dealing with manic depression. Now, with World Mental Health Day on October 10, he's helping other "mental health survivors"
challenge public perceptions. By Jack Hananuer – October 6 – 12 2003 THE BIG ISSUE

A few months ago Jason Pegler was sitting in his local pub when a man approached him, shook his hand, and heartily thanked him for turning his life around.
"I'd never seen him before, he was a complete stranger," Pegler says. "But he knew me from my book. He said that he suffered from a severe personality disorder, and that until he read A Can Of Madness [Pegler's account of hiss life with manic depression], he had been so ashamed because of his illness that he'd never worked, but in the year since then he'd held down a full-lime job. It was a great feeling."
When he started his autobiography, at the age of 23, Pegler was motivated by a desire to work through his own pain by sharing it with others. By the time he finished A Can Of Madness and published it through Chipmunkapublishing, the "mental health survivors' publisher" he had set up in 2002, his ambitions had grown. He wanted to encourage other people with mental illnesses to write down their own experiences, and now the manuscripts are flooding in.
"We're getting inundated, and I've had to say that we won't accept any more scripts until next year," Pegler says. "One of the messages of my book was not to be ashamed because you have a mental illness. I think that was quite liberating for a lot of people, and now there are more and more who realise they're not alone and want to share their experiences. According to the Samaritans, there are 12 million people on anti-depressants in the UK-when you think about that it's actually amazing that no one set up a mental health publishers long ago,"
Pegler is convinced that in the same way that attitudes towards homosexuality have altered dramatically in the last 30 years, people's views of mental illness are also set to change. But he doesn't expect the revolution to happen by itself, which is why Chipmunka's functions are evolving.
"We started out to provide a companion and a means of expression for people with mental illnesses and that remains vitally important," he explains "But there's also the need to select books for publication that will reach a wider audience, including medical professionals, so that we can stop this being a taboo subject and also help bring about improvements in the treatment of mental illness."
One recent example is The Necessity Of Madness Written by American John Breeding, it warns of the dangers of psychiatry, in particular the negative effects prescribed medication can have. Nothing new in that, except that Breeding is a psychiatrist himself.
"All the books are powerful in themselves, but they also have the potential to improve the way mental illness is treated in the UK," says Pegler. "Give John's book to any doctor In the UK and they will be forced to rethink the old-school idea that pills are the answer.
"MORE AND MORE PEOPLE REALISE THEY'RE NOT ALONE AND WANT TO SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES"
Pegler's comments are heartfelt. He was bitter about the way his own manic depression was treated when he was younger, and although he is confident attitudes are beginning to change, he concerned about the establishment's current approach to mental illness.
"Medicine on the whole is becoming more holistic, but whether that is filtering through to this particular area is debatable." he says. "It's certainly the case that the government is trying to exert more control. The new mental health bill will make it easier to lock up people with personality disorders, that will just add to the misconceptions. I recently went to a meeting organised by the Zito Trust [set up by the wife of Jonathan Zito, who was killed by someone suffering from schizophrenia and David Blunkett gave a speech using very strong language that implied things about people with mental illnesses. I was there with a friend of mine who also has manic depression and he was so upset he had to leave.
"But at the same time, the government is trying to increase the number of people with mental illnesses going back into the community, and it's also running a campaign to encourage businesses to look after the psychological well-being of their employees, so it's hard to know what to think. Perhaps the government itself is the real mental health problem!"
Whichever way the politicians decide to go, Chipmunka will continue to pump out the volumes - there are currently 25 new books ready to go to the printers. Although Pegler is increasingly busy with the business side of things, he is still managing to find time to work on his second. And third. And fourth...
"I'm writing a couple of sequels to A Can Of Madness - one that's even angrier, another that's more reflective - and also a few books of fiction," he says, "One of them’s about a mouse that meets a tramp and helps him turn his life around by lots of tiny kindnesses. Because that's all that's needed miniscule changes in perception by all of us; everyone thinking for just an extra half-second about why someone is homeless or has a mental illness or whatever. I think that would make all the difference."
Chipmunkapublishing titles, including A Can Of Madness, The Naked Bird Watcher and The Necessity Of Madness, are available from all good bookshops and can also be ordered online at wwW. Chipmunkapublishing.com

Projects in the UK – Jason’s Story July 2001 – June 2002
Grants Supplement, Comic Relief Annual Review

My name is Jason and I was born in Gloucester in 1975. I grew up a few miles away from the city centre. I went to a grammar school. I was always quite interested in sports and I used to play chess. I realised I had manic depression when I was 17. I was working on my A' levels, revising for an Oxford University entrance exam. I was very bright all the way through school - that's often closely linked with mental illness. My parents were divorced and that was quite stressful. My mum left when I was 14. That was always something that was playing on my mind. I also used to like clubbing and I had taken drugs - perhaps that was a trigger.
In November 1993 I had a breakdown for six months and I went totally manic. I thought a nuclear war was happening. I thought that everyone in the world was plotting against me and I was the only one in the world that could stop the inevitable nuclear war. I had fantasies that I could create world peace through a European hardcore committee. It was my interpretation of the chemical generation and what it meant. I wrote a series of poems on ecstasy and how it changed the world. It was a metaphorical example of taking five billion ecstasy tablets - one for everyone in the world to make them happy. I came down from the high after two weeks and realized that I was in a mental hospital. I stayed in there for six months.
Manic depression is called bi-polar affective disorder nowadays. With this illness you go high and then low. That's what happens to me. I've had five episodes. I've been in hospital four times from the age of 17 to 25 and have spent over a year in hospital in total. Each time I go high, I go low after for twice as long, with suicidal thoughts and clinical depression.
Mania itself is an extraordinary phenomenon. It is impossible to describe. It is like taking an imaginary drug that has never been invented. You start to get this extraordinary amount of confidence in your mind and make all these links that are not there, yet it seems like you are making total perfect sense. A lot of people have beliefs that they are God and they created the world. At the same time you are very conscious at the back of your mind that things aren't well, that things aren't normal. You're having grandiose thoughts (I though I that I could swim to Australia in five seconds) and your brain is working at a million miles an hour. It's an extraordinary feeling. One of the reasons people find it hard to come to terms with manic depression is because that feeling of mania is so strong. They think that they actually enjoy it but really they don't. They describe it in certain literary characters, for example in Greek tragedy.
The humiliation you feel as you come back to normality is unbearable. In a manic state you do really wild things - you might have been running around the streets with no clothes on. The humiliation is the worst feeling in the world apart from being suicidal. But then you move further into depression and have to deal with the humiliation and sell-hatred. The depression in manic depression is the same as the depression in clinical depression, but psychologically you have to deal with having gone manic. This is why so many people with manic depression kill themselves. A large number of people with the illness will kill themselves.
The depression is awful; you feel like you cannot do anything and you have no motivation to do anything. You want to kill yourself but you can't be bothered. If someone gave you a lift to the top of Centre Point you would jump off but you can't be bothered to get there. You lack confidence. You feel guilty that you are a human being, and that you do not deserve to live. You feel guilty that the friends and family you have are being put through so much pain and suffering. There is just no way out. There is a futility to your existence. It's like being at the lowest ebb- you are the worst of the worst, the scum of the earth.
My family tried to support me but did not know how to help. My mother felt guilty that she and my dad didn't get on. My brother was really supportive but didn't know what to do. Two of my friends came to see me almost every day. My friend is now training to be a mental health nurse.
Ever since I first went into hospital at age 17, I knew that if I lived, I would have to write about this experience. I was 17 and my world was completely blown apart. I started writing my autobiography and did not write anything else for two years. I wrote for two weeks and it blew my head apart. I knew it was going to change people's lives because when I showed it to people who had manic depression and schizophrenia they were very impressed.
The book's called 'A Can of Madness'. It is my heart poured down onto a page. It gives a unique insight into what it is like to go manic. It seems that everyone who has got manic depression loves it. At a conference one bloke who had read the book said that he has been working in mental health for 30 years and my book means more to him than everything else put together. Him saying that makes the pain of writing the book worthwhile and it makes me realise that I am an important person in the mental health movement in this country. It inspires me to carry on and help more and more people. I see it as my responsibility and my mission in life to do that. I am going to spend the rest of my life doing that. I dedicated the book to one of my best friends who killed himself last year.
Before I was diagnosed with mental illness, I thought that somebody who was mentally ill was a nutter - someone yon want to stay away from. I think that perception is changing, but I call mental illness the last taboo of the 21st century. Society is totally ignorant and people with mental illness feel isolated.
If I was aware of a group like Steady from age 17 to 25 it would have had a massive impact on my life. The goal of Steady is to find more humanity in people and to help them support each other. I help them out because I think it's so important for other young people to have that help available. Every couple of months we get together and talk about the plans for the future, the budget and how things are organised. We try and get more people involved. Steady can help people through the internet not only in London but also in the rest of the country.
Mental illness could happen to anybody. Just think about that for a second.
Summary: 1 in 4 people will experience some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year and as many as 1 in 5 of all deaths by young people are suicide. As well as dealing with their illnesses, people have to deal with misunderstanding and prejudice in public, at work, in their communities and families, as mental ill-health carries with it myths and stigma. Comic Relief is helping young people with menial health problems to cope with their illnesses and make positive long-term changes in their lives. We are also helping people with mental ill-health to ensure they can participate fully and fairly in society.

THE FACTS
1 IN 4 PEOPLE LIVING IN THE UK WILL EXPERIENCE SOME KIND OF MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEM IN THE COURSE OF A YEAR.
AN ESTIMATED 1 IN 10 PEOPLE WILL HAVE SOME FORM OF DEPRESSION AT ANY ONE TIME, WHILST AN ESTIMATED 1 IN 20 PEOPLE WILL HAVE SERIOUS OR 'CLINICAL' DEPRESSION.
1 IN 100 PEOPLE WITH MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS WILL EXPERIENCE MANIC DEPRESSION.
1 IN 100 PEOPLE WILL EXPERIENCE AT LEAST 1 EPISODE OF SCHIZOPHRENIA.
AROUND 19,000 YOUNG PEOPLE ARE ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR DELIBERATE SELF-HARM EACH YEAR -THAT'S MORE THAN 50 EACH AND EVERY DAY.

CAPTURED MY SOUL – April 21 – 27 2003 THE BIG ISSUE

For years, Jason Pegler struggled with name depression. To mark Mental Health Week he explains how he helped himself through writing and set up his own publishing company

I faced a stark choice: either commit suicide or write a book as honest as the copy of Prozac Nation that I had just finished reading. It was June 1998, a rare hot summer's day in Manchester as I started to write A Can Of Madness, my autobiography about living with manic depression.
I wrote for two weeks, and I was so affected by what I'd written that I didn't return to writing it for two years.
Ever since I'd been diagnosed with manic depression at the age of 17, I'd been desperate to tell the world about how I felt. I needed to stop other people going through the pain that I'd gone through, or at least soften the blow.
I wouldn't wish manic depression on my worst enemy. Now, aged 28, I've had four manic episodes, spent over a year living in mental institutions, and been suicidal for two years of my life, I worried every day about why it happened and how it happened. It took me eight years to accept that 1 had a mental illness.
Having manic depression has made me grow as a person, and I regard every day as a bonus. I've been stable for three years now with the medication I'm on, and I focus on promoting a positive image of mental health.
A Can Of Madness takes you as close to the manic experience as you can get. The book has two common effects on its readers. Firstly, it becomes a friend to people who have experienced mental illness. Secondly, it makes the average person in the street have empathy for people with mental health problems.
In July 2001, I received a Mind Millennium Award to self-publish A Can Of Madness. I finished the book in April 2002, and had a book launch where I live in Vauxhall, south London. I sent copies to charity organisations across the country and founded Chipmunkapublishing, the mental health survivor's publisher. We publish autobiographies, poetry and fiction, written by people with a "mental illness" and their carers.
Chipmunkapublishing empowers its authors and encourages them to become self-publicists. Once published, authors become pro-active mouthpieces for the mental health movement. They rejoin society and take their place in a new, mad genre of literature.
Last year, I travelled the country attending mental health conferences and meetings with my book and a chipmunk hand-puppet that I'd bought for my girlfriend when I was suicidal a year earlier. As I networked with charities across the UK, such as Mind, The Manic Depression Fellowship, Comic Relief, Mindout and Rethink, I realised that I could take the mental health movement forward ambassadorial role. I became more media conscious and found volunteers to help me.
Chipmunkapublishing's second author Dolly Sen, was inspired to write

"I was suicidal for two years of my life. It took me eight years to accept I had a mental illness"
her book, The World Is Full Of Laughter, after reading A Can Of Madness. Dolly says, "This book started out as a suicide note and ended up as a celebration of life."
The media perception of people with mental illness will change in the nest 50 years, and Chipmunkapublishing intends to be a pioneer in facilitating and documenting this process. The mental health movement is in its youth -only 20 years old - and its philosophy will mature and gain momentum. People will stand up and fight for their rights. Chipmunkapublishing is dedicated to representing people with mental health problems and fighting for a community that is alienated and too often ignored by society. We will endeavour to support and work in partnership with anyone else who facilitates these aims and objectives.
The organisation Mindout tells us that one in four people will suffer from mental distress in any given year. Such a figure makes it clear that anyone of us could develop a mental illness. One million people commit suicide every year. This is because people refuse to talk about the last taboo. We put this information on the front of all of our publications to let people know.
Chipmunkapublishing was set up specifically to save people's lives, I wanted to get people from the mental health system and help them realise their dreams. Three of our authors are now patrons of one of our sponsors, a mental health user group in Newcastle called Launch-pad, and they have all been invited to give talks in Newcastle and be paid for giving these talks. We have nine authors at the moment, and we aim to have 40 by the end of the year.
Chipmunkapublishing Is aiming to expand its brief to include authors from all vulnerable sections of society. So if you are a writer who is homeless, for example, or a refugee, or is in prison, then Chipmunkapublishing will read your work. We are also looking for volunteers and sponsorship, as well as support from charities and businesses. Anyone Interested should contact us by email or at the address below.
Order A Can Of Madness and other publications online at www.chiprnunkapublishing.com, or send a cheque for £12, made payable to Chipmunkapublishing, to PO Box 6872, Brentwood. Essex CM13 IZT. Our publications are a/so available from good bookshops. All manuscripts should be sent digitally with one happy and one sad photo (it possible) to info@chipmunkapublishing.com.