Open Minds Quarterly – Summer 2005
Volume 7 Issue 2
Summer 2005
Donna Everhart
“What reader,” says Maureen D. Mack, “does not search for a happy ending at the end of a love story? How many of us yearn for a better ending to a human conflict or loss that we have suffered in our lives?”
“What reader,” says Maureen D. Mack, “does not search for a happy ending at the end of a love story? How many of us yearn for a better ending to a human conflict or loss that we have suffered in our lives?” Mack’s “A Better Ending,” which appears in the summer 2005 issue of Open Minds Quarterly, recounts her and her mother’s experience with depression. The power to create and recreate stories, better beginnings or endings, is often taken for granted by those who do not suffer from the symptoms of mental illness. For those who do, a real sense of powerlessness, heightened by the inability to find a place of value in society, and silence heightens their struggle to cope. Open Minds offers a selection of poetry, informative and reflective essays, fiction, and book reviews, all of them first person accounts of experiences and knowledge in dealing with conditions, mental health practitioners, services, treatments, discrimination and even, yes, success. This issue is portrayed in a warm, bright, inviting format, which is easy to read in few sittings. Throughout the pages, alongside the pain, thrives an atmosphere of celebration. Several lines in G. Michael Miller’s poem “London Psychiatric Hospital Revisited” express the reason for such a positive climate. “Love is stronger than psychiatry,” Miller says; and of the reason for writing: “Real art is stronger than a hospital.” Through art, these writers reveal not only a voice but also a talent. Recounting her trip by bus to the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, after having been asked to contribute one of her paintings, Jerome Frank, in “Mind at Ease,” says that “Despite my OCD, depression and social phobia, I had succeeded.” The magazine listed the winners of the 3rd Annual Brain Storm Poetry and Short Story Contests as well as information about other contests. Front and back artwork by Terry Pretz includes “Butterfly Girl” and “Michael.”
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