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Meaningful work can help people with mental illness
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Don t you miss it?
After leaving my job at The Journal Gazette, I often got asked that question. It usually followed some major news story - the hanging chads, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the election of President Obama.
I ve been thinking about the value of work to our mental and emotional well-being since the recession, a topic especially appropriate now, in May, known as National Mental Health Month.
For most of us, our jobs help us stay mentally healthy. Ask most people who ve been out of work for months. You can be sure they d give up the free time to have the stress of a job back and with it the income.
In fact, jobs are about a great deal more than money. They re about having a place to go every day, making new friends, feeling needed, knowing who we are.
Our identity is tied up with our jobs. For persons with a major mental illness, the Carriage House on Lake Avenue shows the point with daily eloquence.
The Carriage House rehabilitation program, modeled after Fountain House on West 47th in New York City, fosters recovery by offering a work ordered day at the house and by putting and supporting club members in jobs in the community. With more than 300 such programs worldwide, there s no better way to get people back into the mainstream. That s what the research shows.
At the Carriage House in Fort Wayne, 50 to 60 people show up daily, where they might answer the phone, write and edit a newsletter, prepare and serve a big luncheon or tend to the 5-acre grounds. They conduct meetings in which they decide on policy and hiring of staff. In turn, the staff helps the members. But nobody orders the members to keep the clubhouse humming.
As a board member, it always strikes me when I visit the Carriage House that it is just like any other workplace, with the buzz, the ethos and feel of most businesses. But that s only part of the story.
If you need someone for a part-time, entry-level job, you ll have a club member assigned for a few months to fill the job. With that new employee, you ll get a staff member trained in the job, too. You ll have that staffer providing backup should the club member not be able to make it to work on a particular day. It s a great deal for the employer. Better still, it s a great deal for the club member who probably has been struggling hard to make his or her way back into the mainstream.
Since the Carriage House opened more than 10 years ago, it has placed nearly 300 people in transitional jobs throughout the community. You might find these folks in a library, busing tables at a restaurant, serving sodas in a chocolate specialty shop, sorting mail in the mail room of a law office, working in a pet store or doing maintenance in a bank.
The clubhouse has also helped place more than 200 members in jobs with all sorts of coaching, on writing r sum s, handling job interviews and dealing with a boss. We ve also had about 40 members who ve gone on to higher education with plans for landing a permanent, full-time job.
Do the clubhouse jobs help people get better?
Just ask Andy Wilson, director of the Carriage House. He ll tell you that the job puts structure in the club member s day and a spring in his or her step.
They ll even wear their uniform or name tag from the business when they don t have to, he says. They re so proud to be working.
When you re talking about mental illness, you can t overstate what it means to the person to get out of the chronic isolation, the demeaning, demoralizing tedium of existing daily in such solitude.
Research tells the broader story. Persons with a mental illness who work for pay or do volunteer work are less apt to be hospitalized and report having a happier, more meaningful life.
Without a doubt, the Carriage House offers solid proof of the value of work to our mental health, its ability to move almost anyone from despair to hope.
Larry Hayes is the retired editorial page editor and columnist for The Journal Gazette and, most recently, author of 'Mental Illness and Your Town.' He has served on the Carriage House board since his retirement from the paper.
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