Employment and mental illness

16/12/12 06:15 [Sunday]
Historically Society has 'felt sorry' for people unable to work due to the condition of their body or mind or severely hampered in becoming employed, and provided disabled people with money to live on from a general clubbing-together of others not costing each individual much, and provided them with other help where there is excess capacity (like buses which would run anyway but otherwise empty). In recent years - starting earlier certainly than the present Conservative Government in Britain - what has been more to the fore has been to integrate disabled people into the mainstream which means as part of it not giving them any favours. The idea is that any work they can do they should do, and because there is an inherent unwillingness to employ disabled people, perceived as less likely to be up to the job, this is countered by hopeful legislation to outlaw discrimination.
Mentally ill people when they are mentally ill are not likely to be up to the job because the condition of their mind will cause them to lack motivation or to lack skills of planning and organisation. The theory here is that on medication mentally ill people are no longer mentally ill and the debilitations countering their ability to work are corrected. The truth of the question is that for many, medication only partly rectifies their depression or confusion of mind, and for many there are periods in which they relapse. If someone who is mentally ill relapses every few months or every few years this interferes with their capacity to work and makes them less employable. The employer cannot trust that the employee will be up to the mark at any epoch where there may be a lot of demand and need for him to be up to the mark.
It strikes me then that in cases of mental illness some underlying support behind any employment income which may be achieved is a necessary thing. It isn't only DLA to help pay for aids and assistance to counter the condition of disability, but rather Employment Support to make up for the naturally greater obstacles in the way of getting employed and staying employed.
What I'm saying really is that it isn't stigma that employers are less willing to take on mentally ill employees but the hard-nosed assessment that they are inherently less to be relied on. And assessment of unemployed mentally ill people for support - that is people who have had a diagnosis of mental illness even if they are said now to be recovered - needs to allow for this fact in the way things are.