A new study conducted by National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) revealed that the unemployment rate for adults with severe mental illness is more than 80 percent, up by more than five percent a decade ago.
Sita Diehl, lead author of the study and director of state policy at NAMI, and her colleagues concluded that only 17.8 percent of those who have access to mental health services were able to find a job for 2012 compared to 2003 which was at 23 percent.
The researchers noted that the unemployment rate for people with mental illness varied per state. The highest unemployment rate was in Maine at 93 percent while it was only 56 percent in Wyoming.
Six out of ten mentally-ill adults expressed their willingness to work provided that they were given enough support. Without jobs and proper supports, most of them depended on public support programs such as the Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). People diagnosed with mental illnesses became the largest group to benefit from these subsidies.
"It isn't surprising," said Diehl to Kaiser Health News. "We knew that mental health services really took it on the chin during the recession. Employment rates had already been dismal to begin with, and when the supports were eroded, people with mental illness lost support and lost jobs."
But the researchers also considered other factors that might have contributed to the increasing unemployment such as over-dependency to the subsidy programs. A beneficiary automatically loses the health coverage once employed, as well as the cash allowance if the income exceeded the allowed qualifying amount. Most mentally-ill adults would rather stay in the program than work to support themselves.
Despite the statistics, NAMI was positive that the unemployment rate would soon decrease. They stated that the economy is slowly improving, there were developments in mental health parity law, and new insurance options offered by the Affordable Care Act might give people with mental illnesses a chance.
