change in discrimination. They sound like small targets for a £20
mullion campaign but I think they're ambitious and will probably get
about half way there.
But they're not really the best measures. They're based on Graham
Thornicroft's DISC scale, a validated psychiatric scale that focuses on
attitudes rather than behaviour.
In a presentation by Graham Thornicroft I found online he notes the UK
employment and education rate for people with a diagnosis of
schizophrenia is 5%. Other countries in Europe have rates up to 25% from
the same presentation slides.
This may be higher thanks to Time to Change however I'm not sure. It's
certainly a better measure of T2C's success. It's the sort of thing
Andrew Langsley would approve of: a proper outcome measure.
How that's being achieved at the moment might be through the changes to
medical benefits. People might be forced off benefits into low paid jobs
which are poor for their mental health. These sort of roles are the
opposite of what Galen meant when he said Employment is nature's physician.
T2C can do it through a different route: make people value people with a
diagnosis of schizophrenia. Achieving any change on these measures would
have been even more ambitious than the current goals but more worthy too.
Society needs to rectify the mistakes of the past that create ridiculous
situations where only 5% of people with the disability are working or in
education. In South Africa the great mistake of apartheid is being
attempted to be changed by drastic means. Affirmative action means
companies must employ a certain percentage of black staff. I think they
went as far as saying that black people should also be represented
proportionally at senior level.
Many people saw this as lunacy. They were right too. Many companies
refused to invest in South Africa because of the legislation. It forced
companies to hire people who simply didn't have the same experience or
education level as their white counterparts to senior roles.
It's the sort of insanity I like. Apartheid was barbourous but South
Africa was willing to change. The mistake they made was so huge they
were willing to risk economic value and forget about the conventional
government bottom line of GDP. Considering a white and a black person's
life was the important thing. The black majority simply didn't have the
opportunities. The only way to change things was to force through a
change by using legislation. The film Trading Places makes this point a
bit better than I do. A homeless black bum played by Eddie Murphy trades
places with a Wall Street trader on the whim of a couple of
billionaires. The homeless bum turns out to be an excellent trader and
the trader becomes a total bum. (It resonates with my life).
I went through severe mental illness at university. I managed to get a
pretty good grade for my self-proposed dissertation but I scrapped
through my exams and got a basic Honours degree. In my first year I won
a weeks paid drinking from the Physics department because I managed to
answer a question the lecturer proposed that no one else could answer
(why has it taken so long to produce market-ready blue lasers now seen
in modern disc-based optical systems?) so had the capability but my
mental illness made things very difficult and I didn't go to many
lectures either.
In my final year I got recruited to Capital One. They're a pretty
prestigious employer to work for. They estimated they spend £5000 per
graduate they recruited. 4000 people applied for 8 graduate jobs and two
other people were recruited internally. They recruited only from the top
5 universities, people who got a 2:1 and 26 A-level points. At the
second stage of the interview process they did a full day of testing. It
must have been there that I did well. It was enough for me to get a
third round interview and that was with the Director of Sales (Europe)
if I remember right. After they offered me the job they took me on a
weekend out where they paid for everything, I signed the contract before
I got my grades but my potential was shown through the testing.
I deferred the job for a year and when I started there just before my
25th birthday I had high hopes for my life. Then on my 25th birthday I
was sectioned for the first time with a diagnosis of bipolar (apparently
with paranoid features. I've just found the section form) and at risk to
myself. It was 8 years ago now my life changed and I joined the ranks of
the mad.
My friends from university and my family peers are all professionals.
They're successful. They have worked hard and gotten rewarded by life.
When I see them we chat as equals. One or two of them may earn more in a
year than I've earned in my entire adult life.
This rather long example from my life I offer to you to make the point
about the poor life outcomes. I can not assess if I still have the same
capabilities that got me a job at one of the best workplaces in the UK;
Certainly my previous employer, a Chinese-American augmented reality
firm, valued me for my talents rather than my experience. They wanted
someone who could foresee what the next internet might look like.
But that's the exception to the rule. Mental illness makes studying
harder. It makes applying for jobs harder. It makes keeping a job
harder. It makes everything fucking harder. But the mentally ill are
just as capable as the automotons who manage to have smooth careers
where they work themselves up to senior roles. Mental illness takes away
opportunities but it never takes away potential nor talent.
The problem is people don't see that. Recruitment practice looks for
people with continuous work histories. They look for people with the
experience acquired from continued wellness. They look for education
achieved by people who can handle university or professional
qualifications. They seek people who've worked at higher levels of
responsibility, roles which they can get because of their wellness and
the false perception that crazy people can't handle responsibility
whereas the mentally ill often take lower grade roles.
Businesses are driven by the financial bottom line (though admittedly
this is changing in the private sector). They won't make the decision to
advantage the mentally ill and the systems aren't setup to do that
either. The Disability Discrimination Act clearly isn't working in the
UK if the employment and education rate for people with a diagnosis of
schizophrenia is 5%.
In South Africa they really wanted things to change and they took
serious measures. The legislation risked the countries short term future
but it was for the long term benefit. I believe the same ill of
apartheid has happened to the mentally ill and is shown by figures like
the schizophrenia employment and education rate. I think if developed
world nations truly care about rectifying the continuing stigma of
mental illness then they need to be willing to take the same measures if
they'[re truly interested in creating an equal society rather than
spouting rhetoric bullshit (a tautology but a good one).
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