In the course of battling a mental illness, a number of mental health consumers ultimately discover that regular employment is not a good fit. While “normal” people occasionally have a “bad day” in which their work isn’t up to par, a person with a mental illness may have a bad day more often, and may need a work situation that can accommodate this factor. Such an accommodation isn’t done in most companies--they may expect that their employees be efficient at all times. The effects of psychiatric medications in combination with residual symptoms of the illnesses often slow down and impair job performance, sometimes to the point of the work not being at a competitive level. The mental health consumer is then stuck in a lifetime of not being able to work, and thus of not having a lot of the good things in life that people in mainstream society frequently take for granted. A reader writes:
-more-