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One of the foremost ways that many persons with psychiatric disabilities are restricted is through the absence of money. I could not conclude that it is a conspiracy, since I do not have direct evidence of that. However, it may as well be a conspiracy--it seems next to impossible for mentally ill people to become financially secure. 

At a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness--I am not affiliated) meeting, as I vaguely recall, a speaker said that the mental health system is designed to keep too much cash out of our hands, so that we can't buy drugs or create other nuisances. 

Money isn't good or bad. It is necessary for survival, and if you have a lot of it, you have more choices and more comfort. Lack of money forces numerous mentally ill people to live in institutional housing, and forces some to try to survive without housing. Economic deprivation is essentially a form of oppression. 

The money obtained from SSI and/or SSDI usually isn't enough for us to pay rent in a conventional living situation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Renting a room on SSI would leave about a hundred dollars left for food, transportation and other needs. This obviously falls short of a practicable existence. 

Some disabled people have been able to obtain a HUD Section 8 certificate. However, property owners willing accept Section 8 renters are scarce. The waiting list for Section 8, according to a receptionist at Independent Living Resources in Concord, California, is three to five years. According to the same person, rooms for rent start at $600. Based on my own research, this information seems accurate. 

Persons with mental illness often have our weekdays loaded down with appointments due to mental and physical complications of the illness and the medication. The only option for some of us is to get a job that is only on weekends, so that we have the weekdays available to go to all of the appointments. 

Trying to perform at a job can be very difficult and sometimes out of reach. Some of us live with severe anxiety and/or agoraphobia. Others simply can not keep pace with the expected level of performance. The cause of this is partly the impact on energy level of the psychiatric meds. 

When mentally ill people apply for a job, it is tempting for us to remain closeted about the illness. Most employers, if they have a choice of hiring a person with a disability versus someone without, are going to pick the person who does not have any type of disability, physical or mental. This is simply how it is done. Employers are not necessarily to be faulted for this--they're trying to make their company work, and the perceived baggage of a disability could seem like a big headache to them. 

Remaining closeted can be difficult. Employers and coworkers may notice that we could seem "drugged." Alternatively, they may notice that we are more nervous compared to a typical employee. It might work to be hired, and prove that you can do the job; at that point, if the employer has questions, the timing might be good to disclose the disability. 

If you do not have visible side effects, and/or if you do not need any accommodation, you might choose never to disclose the disability in your job. 

Most people with mental illness have issues with employment. And, professional level employment might be our only way of getting out of the hole of economic deprivation. 

The Social Security system is designed to encourage work attempts, but not necessarily to encourage long-term success at them. Since we could potentially earn about a thousand dollars a month without losing SSDI, it could seem that there is a big incentive to work part-time. 

However, any work attempt that has significant pay can adversely affect our cash, housing, and medical benefits. If you earn a thousand a month, it could mean that you lose $300 in your housing subsidy. It could mean invoking a copay with your Medicaid, or even that the Medicaid would be stopped. 

Employment while disabled also entails that you furnish pay stubs to Social Security on a regular basis. There may be other red tape to deal with. Such as, Social Security periodically does a CDR, or Continuing Disability Review. 

If a work attempt at some point terminates, you have to scramble to get your benefits reinstated. There could be a delay in benefits being reinstated to the previous level, because the wheels of government are selectively slow. You could end up going several months at a reduced or nonexistent level of benefits. 

If you are not prepared to obtain a full time position with medical benefits, you might consider "flying under the radar," which to me means that your position only nets about a hundred or two hundred a month, so that you will not be penalized or put under more pressure. 

The mental health treatment system seems designed to insulate the rest of society from us, as opposed to helping us to "reintegrate." If we want to reintegrate, the challenges are numerous, it requires a lot of determination, and the psychiatric illness must be consistently kept at bay. 

Then, why should we even consider this?--you might ask. Work activity entails a lot more effort and exertion, more demands on us, more anxiety, and often less comfort. I could only say that for some of us, it could be worth doing, because we want our lives to be something more.