NYAPRS Note: This article—apart from highlighting a NYS PROS program—offers anecdotal insight into the challenges of regaining employment for people dealing with recurrent mental health problems. This struggle is paramount for any person with a disability, but is certainly not made easier in the current economic climate where any individual faces uncertainty and lack of access in the job market. A lack of access to employment services has kept many people out of the workforce, which may be ameliorated by the Medicaid funding of a range of employment services in different settings within a HARP plan. But the question on everyone’s minds, is: Will the insurance companies know how to pay for it, given the uncertain trajectory employment often takes?
Struggling to Overcome Depression and Return to the Working World
New York Times; John Otis, 11/21/2014
Idleness has a way of creeping up on Kevin Williams.
As a man of many passions and hobbies, he speaks enthusiastically about his love of sketching characters and writing stories; of reading comic books, watching movies and whipping up a meal in the kitchen. It has been much harder, however, for Mr. Williams, 50, to define his ambitions, to pinpoint his purpose and to voice the depths of the internal struggle that has plagued him for more than two decades.
In 1992, Mr. Williams received a diagnosis of a major depressive disorder, which has made it difficult not only to find and keep a steady job, but also to acclimate to a wider world so often unaccommodating of mental illness.
“I want to be flowing more in society, be more interactive,” said Mr. Williams, who has endured prolonged periods of limbo and stagnation.
The first sign that something was amiss came in his 20s. Mr. Williams said he would get into bed at night — and remain there well into the day. Weeks would roll by without his leaving home, days would pass without his showering. He was oblivious to the extent of his dormancy.
“My family members pointed it out to me,” Mr. Williams said. “They said, ‘You’re not the same as you used to be.’ I was always good in school, very talkative, very vibrant. My family saw the change.”
He was convinced that they were overreacting, that he was simply in a temporary slump. To ease their worry, Mr. Williams complied with his family’s requests to visit a doctor.
“I’m a cooperative person,” he said. “You don’t know everything; otherwise you’d be king of the world.”
He was upset and humbled by his depression diagnosis. He began attending an outpatient mental health program. In 1999, he completed a job-training course and held a few jobs over the next seven years, working as a messenger and a mailroom clerk.
“I’m happy getting a job,” Mr. Williams said. “I’m working. But there’s always that looming thought: Suppose I start showing symptoms of relapse.”
None of the jobs lasted more than two years; Mr. Williams has not worked since 2006. He stopped going to his mental health programs shortly after completing his job training. “Sometimes when you stop working, you’re reluctant to get back into a program because you think you’re going to find a job,” he said.
In 2012, Mr. Williams was advised by a therapist to return to a program. He began attending Brooklyn Community Services’s MetroClub Personalized Recovery Oriented Services, which provides therapy, workshops, and job training to people with mental illnesses. Brooklyn Community Services is one of seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
“I really like it,” Mr. Williams said. “It’s tranquil. Sometimes at other places, there can be more hustle and bustle; sometimes the members can be more rowdy. It’s very comfortable.”
Mr. Williams receives $698 each month in public assistance, most of which goes toward household expenses. He shares an apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, with his fiancée, a woman he has known for 16 years.
One of Mr. Williams’s major goals is to find employment. For the past few months, he has been working with MetroClub on a variety of skills to make himself job-ready, including mock job interviews. In September, Brooklyn Community Services gave Mr. Williams $80 in Neediest Cases funds to buy a shirt, tie and pants to wear on job interviews. He has his eye on a few job postings that excite him, including ones in clerical work and retail.
Job placement, however, can be a slow process for those in Mr. Williams’s circumstances, MetroClub staff members say. So far he has been to only one interview. “I see myself doing good,” he said. “I have very little doubt or skepticism.”
Mr. Williams is demonstrative when discussing his ambitions and his newfound abilities, reciting his hopes as if part of a mantra that bears repeating so it will come to fruition.
“The point I’m at now, more and more than ever before, I can see myself getting into work mode,” Mr. Williams said. “When you practice something, you’re more substantial with it. I feel more confident than I’ve been.”
He closed his eyes as he spoke, as if beguiled by images of future possibilities.