Calling work a ‘right’ may sound
too pompous and grandiose to the
enormous numbers of people for
whom it is much more like
drudgery. But nothing erodes selfconfidence and self-respect so
quickly as a spell of unemployment
no matter how much the job that
has been lost was loathed.
Apart from sapping the reserves of
the individual and his family,
being out of work is a great social
stigma except in some of the consistently depressed areas of the
country where it has become a sad
fact of life. Perhaps it remains a
social stigma elsewhere because
there is an element of personal
blame that can be attached to it?
‘He’s no need to be out of work,
there’s plenty of jobs to be had if
he just looks for them hard enough.
His trouble is that he’s idle?got
no drive’.
However unfair this attitude may
be it is something that unemployment has in common with another
social stigma?mental illness. Despite a growing enlightenment and
all the educative work of MIND/
NAMH, there is still more than a
trace of the attitude that mental
illness arises out of personal
weakness, that it is somehow a
person’s own fault and that he
should ‘snap out of it’ or ‘pull
himself together’.
To be both an ex-mental hospital
patient and unemployed seems to
compound the stigma in the minds
of many members of the public
although a few moments thought
should make it obvious that cause
and effect are at work here.
Apart from people whose illness is
short and easily brought under
control, and whose jobs are held
open for them, the ex-mentally ill
are right at the end of the queue for
jobs. At times of- high national
unemployment figures (like now)
their prospects are even more
bleak. They are always last in,
first out on the labour market. A
great many employers are reluctant
to give a job to someone who has
had a mental illness although there
are a few notable exceptions.
Elsewhere in this issue there are
articles by an ex-patient about the
paucity of the system for launching
people who have been mentally ill
back into employment and about a
highly successful rehabilitation
hospital which equips people for
re-employment after years in
mental hospital but which has
about 60 people ‘marking time in a
siding’ at the moment because there
are no jobs to be had.
Returning to work is the last and
vital link in the chain of recovery
after any illness?if you are back at
work you are recognised as fully
recovered. For far too many exmentally ill people this last link
is desperately difficult to forge.
As a society we are far too fond of
the philosophy that the weak go to
the wall although, in the case of the
ex-mentally ill, it is not so much
weakness as a total lack of comprehension and ill-informed prejudice on the part of the authorities
and the employers that leaves them
out in the cold and unable to get
back into the mainstream of living.
Social Stigma
Apart from sapping the reserves of the individual and his family, being out of work is a great social stigma except in some of the consistently depressed areas of the country where it has become a sad fact of life. Perhaps it remains a social stigma elsewhere because there is an element of personal blame that can be attached to it? ‘He’s no need to be out of work, there’s plenty of jobs to be had if he just looks for them hard enough. His trouble is that he’s idle?got no drive’.
However unfair this attitude may be it is something that unemployment has in common with another social stigma?mental illness. Despite a growing enlightenment and all the educative work of MIND/ NAMH, there is still more than a trace of the attitude that mental illness arises out of personal weakness, that it is somehow a person’s own fault and that he should ‘snap out of it’ or ‘pull himself together’.
To be both an ex-mental hospital patient and unemployed seems to compound the stigma in the minds of many members of the public although a few moments thought should make it obvious that cause and effect are at work here.
Apart from people whose illness is short and easily brought under control, and whose jobs are held open for them, the ex-mentally ill are right at the end of the queue for jobs. At times of- high national unemployment figures (like now) their prospects are even more bleak. They are always last in, first out on the labour market. A great many employers are reluctant to give a job to someone who has had a mental illness although there are a few notable exceptions. Elsewhere in this issue there are articles by an ex-patient about the paucity of the system for launching people who have been mentally ill back into employment and about a highly successful rehabilitation hospital which equips people for re-employment after years in mental hospital but which has about 60 people ‘marking time in a siding’ at the moment because there are no jobs to be had.
Returning to work is the last and vital link in the chain of recovery after any illness?if you are back at work you are recognised as fully recovered. For far too many exmentally ill people this last link is desperately difficult to forge. As a society we are far too fond of the philosophy that the weak go to the wall although, in the case of the ex-mentally ill, it is not so much weakness as a total lack of comprehension and ill-informed prejudice on the part of the authorities and the employers that leaves them out in the cold and unable to get back into the mainstream of living.