I've been on both sides of the work fence. I was so ill I was committed to a psych hospital for an entire year. Obviously I was unable to work. Not long after I was discharged, I was referred to my current psychiatrist. He's predominantly an in-patient psychiatrist with a small private practice. It was a gift from G-d he had out patient room for me. Once I was discharged from long-term confinement, he let me know he believed in my ability to one day resume my career. It was a long road of many more long inpatient admissions, psychotic episodes, mania, depressions, and trauma reactions but we got there. I'm a cancer researcher by education and profession. I returned to research 10 years after my year-long admission. It was a victory of enormous proportions. All because one MD believed and expected that that day would come.

At first I was terrified, but I learned quickly that work was an amazing drug. It gave me intellectual stimulation, it provided me with purpose, it upped my social skills, it forced me into a normal routine, I spent time again on an equal footing with people who were not mentally ill, and it gave me the dignity to support myself. I obtained an FMLA because I went through a vicious manic-psychotic rapid cycling phase. I had hospital admissions that lasted as long as eight weeks followed by other less lengthy admissions. The FMLA saved me. I kept my job. I was good at it. Even through a brutal relapse I held firm to my employment. It was worth the struggle.

I'm retired now. I write and talk about all the complexities of navigating life with a severe mental illness. It was a good transition. I've learned a lot and been through a lot in 30 years of complex treatment.