Mental Health Association in South Carolina -
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Published on: 6/22/2003
Last Visited: 2/22/2004
"What mental health practitioners need to hear," Zlatka Russinova, Ph.D., told Psychiatric Times, "is that people with serious mental illness do have the capacity to go back to work."Russinova is senior research associate at Boston University's Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation and has specialized in researching the connections between mental illness and employment.
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In one study of workers with serious mental illness, Russinova and her colleagues found that 74% of the 687 participants had held the same job for 24 months or longer.
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Russinova is more emphatic in extolling the abilities of people with mental illness.
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Russinova said the group "had a very interesting distribution: 75% of the whole sample was employed full time; 62% had held their position for more than two years; 28% had held the same job for more than five years.What was most interesting was that they had the capacity to keep such high-level jobs for a long time.Thirty-three percent of this sample were working in non-helping professions; 16% were working in health and social services other than mental health--we separated the health services.Thirty percent were in mental health; 21% in self-help advocacy jobs.All in all, it was a very surprising, very positive picture."
Many of the study participants were dependent on continuing treatment to maintain their positions, Russinova said.
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"The bottom line is that people with mental illness are able to sustain employment," Russinova said.
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