A friend of mine has recently been applying for a full-time job, after years of freelancing for various organisations. Like me, she has spent a long time in the psychiatric system; in fact that’s where we met. Like me, she was unable to work for several years as she shuttled between various wards, day hospitals and crisis centres, finally doing an 18-month stretch (her term, her humour) on a locked ward in Northampton.
It’s now more than a decade since Bev (not her real name) was admitted anywhere. She still takes medication and sees a psychiatrist a few times a year, but to all intents and purposes Bev’s life now resembles that of any 40-something working person – whatever that looks like. As Bev, who has a history of self-harm, puts it, “So long as I wear long sleeves, no one can tell”.
Which is great, in a way. One of the very few things the last government did to make life easier for people with mental health problems was to introduce legislation preventing employers from asking about the health of an applicant before making a job offer. (There are some exceptions. You cannot apply to MI6 if you’ve ever been diagnosed with either “manic depression” or schizophrenia, for example.)
While this change was long overdue and extremely welcome, that such legislation is needed is indicative of the fact that true equality, equality whereby the full range of human experience is regarded as equally valid and potentially useful, is still pretty much a pipedream for the vast majority of people with mental health problems. The best we can hope for is that nobody will find out.
This seems a pity. It’s a pity for the person forced to try and conceal the gaps in their CV by means of extended periods of “overseas travel”, career breaks and whatever else, like brushing strands of hair across a bald patch. But it’s a pity for employers, too, who must assess candidates without access to information on the full range of skills and experience they may have to offer.
This struck me forcibly while reading through Bev’s recent application. How absurd that while she was obliged to list her O-level results, both subject and grade, obtained more than 30 years ago, she felt obliged to omit her years of experience as a mental health service user. Or that in her personal statement, in which she had to outline the ways in which her skills and experience matched those in the person specification, she left out the hugely valuable interpersonal skills, she’d honed during 18 months on a medium secure ward.
Experience both of mental health problems and of receiving treatment for mental health problems is just as important and relevant as any other experience. The lessons to be drawn from it are infinitely varied and rich. I have a number of qualifications, including a BA and a master’s. Both courses taught me a great deal, both continue to inform my thinking today personally and professionally, but some of the most useful experience I bring to my work, as a university lecturer in creative writing, for example, not only bears no qualification but would need to be actively excised from any job application.
Or almost any. A few enlightened employers, mainly in the mental health sector, charities, campaign groups and some health trusts, value service user experience, but they represent a tiny proportion of the jobs on offer.
I can’t help dreaming of a time when you could refer to what you learned on the wards as matter-of-factly as what you learned from your BA. In the meantime Bev will just have to keep wearing long sleeves.