Stigma and Discrimination

In my last post, I gave the history of my life with mental illness in a nutshell. In this post, I will outline the dark side of mental illness. There exists a strong stigma with mental illness, and people with mental illness often suffer discrimination. Despite my efforts to work and be a productive member of American society, I never can land full-time employment. Always in some way, my failure to gain employment has its roots in mental illness, often in the form of discrimination.



Sometimes the discrimination is overt. Sometimes, it's subtle. For example, I interviewed for a position as a mathematics teacher at a private high school in Las Vegas. The interview committee simply asked me to tell them about myself. They couldn't believe I had attended three universities for graduate school, and they demanded explanations. Eventually, I volunteered the information that I suffer from a "mental disability". Despite my assurances that I am getting treatment for it and the condition is under control, the interview committee grew hostile. Everything I said after the revelation became offensive to them. After the interview I felt like vomitting. Nevertheless I didn't get the job.



Never try to work for the Department of Defense or for a defense contractor if you suffer from a mental illness. You will never get approved for a security clearance, which is necessary for keeping your job. A defense contractor in San Diego hired me as a software engineer, and I worked under probation while the Dept. of Defense processed my security clearance application. One question on the security clearance application asks is, "Have you ever sought treatment from a psychiatrist or psychologist?" Since it's bad to lie to the government, especially the Dept. of Defense, I truthfully answered "Yes".

About one year later, a special agent from the Defense Security Services (DSS) came to my office. He flashed his DSS badge and asked to "interview" me. It turned out to be an interrogation. This was pre-9/11. The special agent questioned me about my psychiatric history. He was mostly interested in getting me to sign away my privacy rights to my medical records. This gave him access to every psychiatrist I had ever seen and to medical records at every psychiatric hospital where I had stayed.

My psychiatrist at the time reported to me that the special agent had visited her, asking questions about my illness. She merely told him that bipolar disorder causes bad judgment, which it does. The DSS special agent returned repeatedly to my office to interrogate my co-workers. My co-workers were alarmed because they asked me questions like, "What did you do?" I truly felt like the DSS special agent suspected me of criminal actions.

While mentally ill people often commit crimes, mental illness itself is not a crime. Still, society treats it as one. I have never committed a crime, but my condition automatically makes me a suspect. In short, not all mentally ill people are criminals. Psychiatric disorders are medical issues. I quit the job before the DSS special agent could complete my security clearance investigation. For months before he showed up at my office, I had been planning to return to graduate school.

By the time he did show up to interrogate me, UCSD readmitted me, and I was drafting my resignation statement for my boss. Most likely, the Department of Defense would reject my application for a security clearance due to my psychiatric history, and I would have lost my job.

As I mentioned before, UCSD turned out to be a total failure. Years later, after being unable to land a full-time job, I decided to become a high school physics teacher in California. To become a teacher in California, you need a Certificate of Clearance. You must submit fingerprints, and then the California Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI conducted background investigations on you. The first question on background asks, "Do you have any physical or mental restrictions that prevent you from exercising your duties as a teacher?"

The truth was, "Yes," because bipolar disorder can get bad enough for me to go to a hospital for a few days to a few weeks, but by then the disorder was under control with medication and therapy. Nobody can predict the state of his or her health, regardless of whether it's mental or physical. Since that was post-9/11, I decided against becoming a teacher because of the intense scrutiny I would receive from answering that question affirmatively. Society views people like me as a threat, which is unfounded. If I were such a raving lunatic, I would not be able even to write this blog.

I became an atheist because of the discrimination I received from the Roman Catholic Church. I had wanted to become a Roman Catholic priest, but every religious order and diocese rejected me for their priestly formation programs. Like the Department of Defense, the vocations directors ask you, "Have you ever seen a psychiatrist or psychologist?" If you answer, "Yes", the Church will bar you from the priesthood. I tried religious order after religious order and diocese after diocese for a decade, and every single one of them rejected me solely because I sought treatment from psychiatrists. One Franciscan vocation director said his order would consider me if my psychiatrist took me off all medications. It is precisely the medications that keep me stable enough to function. The Franciscan was unreasonable and quite ignorant of the nature of mental illness. The Roman Catholic Church is hardly the keeper of all that is good and holy in the world.

Lastly, I looked into attending law school to become an intellectual property attorney. Eventually I found that most state bar associations prohibit people like me who have psychiatric issues from practicing law. Still, I did some research and found I could have conditional admission to the bar. Denial of admission to the bar constitutes a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The ABA did decide to provide for conditional admission to state bar associations for former mental patients.

Yet, as a former mental patient, I would be treated differently than other lawyers by my state bar association. I would be subject to mental fitness reports, which attorneys without mental health issues, would not be subject to. The state bar can force me to meet higher standards than the so-called "normies", or normal people, people without a diagnosis of mental illness. That and the fact I can't afford the law school destroyed my law career.

So in general, if you have a mental illness, society subjects you to discrimination and stigma that is like racial and sexual discrimination. Although my condition affects my behavior, I never chose to have bipolar disorder. The disorder chose me. I choose to obey the law, and it is mentally ill people who chose to break it that make life difficult for law abiding citizens like me. I have no hope of a normal, productive life. I will be on government welfare programs for the disabled for life the way things are going. When my parents die, most likely I will live on the streets like so many other mentally ill people.