Mark Henick

Mark Henick was fifteen and living in Cape Breton when he climbed over the railing of a bridge in his own town. A stranger in a brown coat talked to him quietly from behind while a bystander shouted at him to jump, then got an arm round his chest and pulled him back over. He told that story in a TEDx talk in 2013 which has been watched millions of times, and spent years afterwards trying to find the man in the coat. So-Called Normal, published by HarperCollins Canada in January 2021, is the longer version: a childhood of depression and anxiety, repeated hospital admissions, a family under strain, and the places where the mental health system failed him. He has sat on the board of the Mental Health Commission of Canada and led a provincial division of the Canadian Mental Health Association, the youngest person to do either, and he presents a podcast under the book's name.