8. Turning Symptoms into Superpowers

Finding someone who actually "got" me — and all of us who struggle with serious mental illness.

The talk began almost immediately. The blinds were drawn and as the lights were turned off and the PowerPoint began, the crumpled papers Bob Drake and I had just scrambled to collect from the hallway were passed throughout the lecture hall.

The darkness of the room eased my anxious heart and as its rate slowed from jacked through the roof to slowed syncopation, I grew calm enough to actually hear Bob Drake’s words.

The material was dry at first – citations galore and graph after graph of statistical analysis that proved the efficacy of supported employment. Monochromatic slide after another, it became clear that supported employment didn’t only help people with serious mental illness, it transformed their lives. Case study after case study proved that when people living with disabling mental illness were invited into a community in an employment setting that fostered purpose and camaraderie, these individuals did not merely improve, they got off of long-term disability.

The very idea th…