by Lael Ewy
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| Courtesy National Archives |
Statistics vary, but the prevalence of mental illness in America typically falls within a range of 17 to 25%. If government stats are even close, that’s about the same as the prevalence of heart disease, America’s #1 killer, and twice that of breast cancer.
With this kind of demographic saturation you would think that we’d stop considering mental illness as something that afflicts “them” and start thinking of it as something that afflicts “us.” We all suffer from emotional stress from time-to-time, and many of us can relate to extreme states of mind brought on by the vagaries of early 21st Century American life.
But how many of us would be so bold as to place a psychiatric diagnosis on a résumé? Peer support workers in mental health are asked to do just that, but for good reason: having gone through mental health difficulties and recovered, peer support workers have deep, lived experience. With this experience, these workers help mental health care recipients identify and employ strengths to deal with difficulties and triggers, self-advocate with care providers, and find and pursue lives of their own choosing.
The positive qualities of mental health recovery have recently gotten some good press in a story by Boston’s WBUR, but they hold deep lessons for other work situations as well, from dealing with the stress of overwork to the trauma of corporate reorganization.
Still, there is stigma: we are a long way from the time when most people will feel comfortable putting their psychiatric histories on their CVs.
However, workers who have recovered from emotional difficulties and extreme mental states can be exemplars of resilience, positive role models to others in the workplace who might find themselves at the cusp of similar circumstances. Above all, those who have recovered their mental wellbeing are reminders of the “us-ness” of these all too common difficulties, and of the hope-inducing fact that those difficulties can be overcome.
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