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One of the most humiliating jobs I've tried was done in conjunction with a mental health agency whose role it was to assist me in knowing how to be a busboy at a Denny's. I recall wearing the unform and watching as the job person at the mental health agency hobnobbed with the restaurant manager. Not only was I in the lowest of entry level positions, at the same time I was the token mentally disabled guy. This was a giant step down from the time I was assistant manager, trainer, and technician at a television repair shop in Pinole, California, or later a valued technician who repaired televisions and VCRs at an established shop. In both positions, which I held in my early twenties, I did not reveal a mental illness. And in both positions, supervisors complimented my work. 

Such jobs could bring respect. Busboy doesn't. I was good at electronic repair in my early twenties. However, I wanted to try other things, partly because there is a lot of pressure in the repair industry, and the vast majority of the jobs are full-time, which I could not do. 

Bus persons should not be considered low, because bussing dishes is genuine work and a valuable service. Yet social norms have never been fair. 

A job should not humiliate. It must be a source of increased self-esteem, and if it is not, why do it? Certainly, other jobs can be found if the issue is to earn money. Certainly, methods of coping with a job situation can be found, other than having a job coach who will, among other things, show you how to retrieve and bring back shopping carts in the parking lot of Target. (I've witnessed scenarios like this for mental health consumers other than me.) 

The same agency destroyed my chances of snagging a great television repair job at a family-owned TV repair business. Most people in business when wanting to hire someone for something requiring brains, do not want to deal with a person who cannot represent themself. Having a mental health person as an intermediary is a total disqualifier for most skilled positions. 

You can't really force an employer to hire someone they don't want-- that's just reality. You can bring up the Americans with Disabilities Act all you want, but a company owner does what they believe will work for their company. Remaining closeted concerning a disability may work better for a mental health consumer much of the time. That's the only way we can feel as though treated as a normal worker. And that method lends self-esteem, as opposed to being hired because you are fulfilling a quota of disabled people so that the hiring company can look charitable and maybe get a tax break. 

If you are your own agent and do not receive assistance from the mental health treatment systems in your efforts to find and do work, and if you then have some level of success, it brings in genuine self-confidence, self-value, and healing. When you continuously behave like a broken machine in need of the repairs to the operating system, through therapy, then you become only part of a person and not a whole person. 

The above is not to say there isn't a place for therapy and help--there indeed is. I'm receiving help at this phase in my life because the life circumstances I am up against are very hard. 

When we are in crisis, help from the mental health treatment system is often very welcome. There are a lot of things they can do, they have a lot of resources, and they are usually motivated to get us out of a crisis. Yet, beyond that, when we are seeking to take the next step, that of becoming a success, they may get in the way. In many instances, the mental health treatment system is only another obstacle we must clear on our path toward succeeding at something. 

At the point where we feel ready to take the next step, sometimes it seems as though individuals in the treatment system are hanging on to you as though you stepped on a mound of bubble gum on hot asphalt. 

The standards and milestones that constitute success for someone with a major mental condition are not the same as for a neuro-typical person. I'm a big success because, despite being diagnosed with Schizophrenia, Paranoid-type at age eighteen, I've made it past 50 years old, I'm not incarcerated or living in an institution, and I have a roof over my head and food in my stomach. (As I write these words, I have food in my stomach--I just ate lunch.) 

I write for newspapers and for some magazines. This fact does not seem to compute with individuals in the mental health treatment system. This does not compute when many people deal with me. I must come across in person as a person of normal to low intelligence. I don't know what the explanation is. 

On the other hand, the greatest obstacle to success for many Americans and people of other cultures, could be our own fears, our own self-doubt, and the belief that we do not deserve success--also the belief that we can't do it. Thinking of success as a distant thing, relegated to greater people than oneself, almost as though from another planet than Earth, could be a misconception that blocks many people from taking even the first steps. It is easy to blame the mental health treatment system for creating impediments to success, yet, if we fully intend to be successful, and mentally well, the mental health treatment system will not stop us from that.