High percentage of mentally ill unemployed, study finds

The state of Alabama has an almost 90 percent unemployment among its mentally ill, a recent study found.

The figure is about 10 percent higher than the national average, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which views the statistic as more about the lack of support for this group of people than it does about the economy.

The states with the five highest levels of unemployed persons in the public mental health care system are Maine, 92.6 percent; West Virginia, 91.9 percent; Hawaii, 91.4 percent; Pennsylvania, 90.6 percent; and California, 90.0 percent.

Alabama is sixth.

Generally speaking, the employment rate is low across the nation “because of the stigma attached to mental illness and employers that find someone has a mental illness, or has to take off to go to appointments, tend to not want to hire those individuals,” said Henry Parker, executive director of the Montgomery Area Mental Health Authority.

About 60 percent of people with mental illness want to work, and two-thirds can successfully hold down a job if they’re given appropriate support, the report says.

Yet fewer than 2 percent of people in the public mental health system receive this help, a cost-effective program called supported employment, which has been studied in 20 high-quality clinical trials over the past 25 years.

“There are all levels of mental illness; some that do not affect the ability to work, and some that do. The stigma affects everybody,” Parker said. “What we do with (those) who wants to work, and in our estimation are capable of working, we refer them to vocational rehab. And they do the testing and training and help them find jobs.”

Unemployment among those with mental illness dwarfs the overall rate in the U.S.A., currently at 6.1 percent. Yet the new report probably underestimates the true size of the problem because researchers didn’t factor in the more than half a million people with mental illness who are homeless or in jail.

USA TODAY contributed to this article

Coming soon

The Montgomery Advertiser will take a closer look in the week ahead at both the employed and unemployed mentally ill and the struggles they face.