Self-employment is an alternative to wage employment and an opportunity to increase labor force participation by people with psychiatric disabilities. Self-employment refers to individuals who work for themselves, either as an unincorporated sole proprietor or through ownership of a business. Advantages of self-employment for people with psychiatric disabilities, who may have disrupted educational and employment histories, include opportunities for self-care, additional earning, and career choice. Self-employment fits within a recovery paradigm because of the value placed on individual preferences, and the role of resilience and perseverance in business ownership. Self-employment creates many new US jobs, but remains only a small percentage of employment closures for people with psychiatric disabilities, despite vocational rehabilitation and Social Security disability policies that encourage it. This commentary elucidates the positive aspects of self-employment in the context of employment challenges experienced by individuals with psychiatric disabilities and provides recommendations based on larger trends in entrepreneurship.

Developed in collaboration with the WHO

Mental health settings serving the severely psychiatrically disabled or the long-term chronic client have begun developing a rehabilitation orientation in an attempt to increase their effectiveness with this group. The authors have, in an earlier work, described basic elements of a rehabilitation program. These elements have been refined. Forty rehabilitation-oriented community and hospital agencies were assessed in terms of the presence or absence of these elements of a rehabilitation approach. Results indicate that the programs in the agencies clearly value client involvement and a program focus on improving skill and resource utilization. These concepts, however, are only beginning to be systematically implemented in practice.

Questions are raised regarding the definition of "peerness"; the variety and contradictions in definitions of the role of the peer specialist; existing and potential avenues for career advancement; credentialing standards; the design, implementation, and evaluation of existing and effective peer support service models, including integration of peer workers in other service models; and best practices for supporting the well-being of peer workers and their nonpeer colleagues. More and higher quality research data are needed in order to inform and contribute to the use and support of peer specialists in promoting positive system transformation. (PsycINFO Database Record

If the most effective approaches to reduce public prejudice and discrimination toward people diagnosed with a mental illness are education and contact, then those methods may be useful methods to help mental health service providers view and engage persons served from a strengths-based recovery and wellness orientation.