The chances for people suffering from serious mental illness to secure gainful employment, always dismally low, are getting worse. Their unemployment rate stands at 80 percent, a report says.
In 2012, only 17.8 of recipients of public mental health services had jobs, down from a 23 percent figure recorded in 2003, the National Alliance on Mental Illness said in its report.
"It isn't surprising," says report author Sita Diehl, director of state policy at NAMI.
The problem impacts the organizations that provide services for people with serious mental illness as much as the workers themselves, she says.
"We knew that mental health services really took it on the chin during the recession," she says. "Employment rates had already been dismal to begin with, and when the supports were eroded, people with mental illness lost support and lost jobs."
While the national unemployment rate for people diagnosed with mental illness hovers around 80 percent, five states -- California, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maine -- had rates above 90 percent, the NAMI report found.
The lowest unemployment rate was Wyoming's, at 56 percent.
Around 60 percent of adults with serious mental health issues express a desire to work, and with the right help and support some 40 percent could succeed in the workplace, NAMI says.
A year of employment for a mentally ill individual in a supported structure where a job coach can help the participant gain the skills for a new vocation costs around $4,000, says Robert Drake of the Dartmouth Psychiatric Researcher Center.
However, just 1.7 percent of such individuals received such services during 2012, the NAMI report said.
Many of them find themselves instead in expensive public systems, including Social Security Disability Income and Supplemental Security Income.
People suffering from mental illness are the biggest and the fastest-growing group in both programs.
Being on SDI and SSI can also be a barrier to seeking employment since beneficiaries who begin working can find themselves losing Medicare or Medicaid benefits, says David Wittenburg, senior scholar at Mathematica Policy Research.
That's why once on SSDI or SSI, people are disinclined to remove themselves from the plans, he says. "The most common reasons for leaving the programs are death or retirement," he says.
NAMI Executive Mary Gilberti has urged states to commit to helping those suffering mental illness find recovery through employment.
"Work is a critical part of recovery," she says. "As a nation, we still have a long way to go in recognizing that linkage."
