How does mental illness affect someone on the job?  Boy I wish there was an easy 
answer to that but it really varies depending on the individual, the type of illness that they 
have and the type of the demands of the job that they are in.  As with all disabilities, 
mental illness is only one aspect of who that individual is.  So don't put too much stock in 
that diagnostic label.  I've had people in our classes say with good intentions "gee what 
kind of a job do you find for someone with schizophrenia"?  Well the fact that someone 
has been labeled as having schizophrenia really just gives you a ballpark of information 
about what that person might be experiencing.  It doesn't tell you who they are.  It doesn't 
tell you what their education is like or what their job experience has been like.  Or what 
kind of skills and strengths they have.  And those are also very, very important factors in 
helping people be successful in employment.  

You should know also that long-term mental illnesses have a wide range of impact on 
people.  Some people may have an illness like depression or bipolar disorder that is well 
controlled by medication.  And those folks may have the kind of support that they need to 
be stable in their lives and to maintain employment.  Those are not the people we're going 
to see in supported employment programs.  The folks that are going to be coming to us 
for services are going to be people who are having difficulty in employment, difficulty 
with housing perhaps or difficulty in their family lives as well.  And so we tend to see 
people who are at the more impacted range of all people with long-term mental illness.  

We need to keep in mind also that there are other influences that can have an impact on 
the individual that are just as powerful as the impact of the disability itself.  Stigma for 
example.  Amy alluded to this in her introduction, but I think we are all aware that mental 
illness is probably the most stigmatized disability in our country.  When they do surveys 
of individuals and say here's a list of potential disabilities, which one would you most 
like to have, mental illnesses is always at the bottom of the list.  When you look at the 
kind of images of people with mental illness that are presented in the popular press, they 
are usually images of people who are out of control, who are committing crimes, etc, etc.  
So there is a tremendous amount of sigma associated with long term mental illness.  

Most people with long-term mental illness are also dealing with the effects of long-term 
unemployment.  Studies vary but anywhere from 70-90% of people with long-term 
mental illness are unemployed or underemployed.  In being unemployed in our society is 
really a disability in itself.  We gain a lot from our jobs.  Those of us that are employed.  
Not only income, but also our social status, time structure during the day, opportunities 
for social interactions, self-esteem, self-image.  All those things are more difficult for 
people to access if they are unemployed.  

People with long-term mental illness like people with other disabilities are usually poor.  
They may be living on SSI or living on SSDI and trying to pay their rent and buy their 
groceries and by transportation with that little bit of money.  In addition there's a lot of 
concern, a lot of fear about losing the medical benefits that come along with those income 
support benefits.  

As I said before, a lot of people with mental illness have not had a chance to complete 
their education and so that lack of education and lack of work experience really becomes 
a barrier as well.  So the bottom line really is to start with the individual and not with the 
psychiatric label.  Psychiatric labels really only tell you a little bit about who that person 
is and we really want to start with the skills and strengths of the individual that we're 
working with and supporting.