I got a confirmation e-mail Sat. from my psychiatric hospital saying that I'd been confirmed by the Board of Governor's as a Consumer Rep on one of the hospital's governing committees - The Consituencies committee.

This is a relatively big deal as I'll be able to vote on stuff affecting hospital policy, and will be my first real role as a consumer advocate. I don't know how many applicants they had for the spot but I had to apply and be selected for consideration, and then endorsed by the hospital's empowerment council.

When I first applied - it was back in Dec. and I was still feeling relatively ok about being open about my MH issues. After having the bad experience at my last job and fired almost immediately after disclosing my MH and addictions history, I'm now a lot more nervous about it.

I guess I have 2 worries - getting my name in the papers while I'm job hunting, since I'm job hunting I really don't want anyone knowing my MH history and having to arrange to take time off work for when the committee meets. Their first meeting which is an all day event, is during the day. I'm going to e-mail them back and ask approximately how often the committee meets. But it could be a problem. Oh well, I'll deal with that later.

I think I'm still going to go for it, despite the potential complications, because I'm really interested in MH issues, and I think it's a really big honour to be chosen to represent consumers at Canada's biggest psych hospital. Plus it'll get me access to and involvement in other province wide MH initiatives. Who knows what that might lead to?

I'm mostly excited, but I have reservations too.

--splitimage