Working While Schizophrenic: Becoming Out and Proud

My parents didn’t like that I, as the only Kerenza Ryan on social media, wanted to announce to the world that I am schizophrenic. Too big of a risk in my job hunt. I listened at first, changing my name on my profiles to avoid immediately showing up to employers.

But I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and I wasn’t going to stop publishing my pieces. I started in smaller magazines and eventually published a poetry collection called “I Am Schizophrenic.” Talk about obvious.

Jobs aren’t allowed to ask whether or not you are mentally ill. I do remember one, in particular, asking if my “writing” got in the way of my job. That was not a position I was hired for. Another employer  later cried about the way I deal with the physical health problems that come with my medication regimen (this while I worked in a doctor’s office, no less).

I was hospitalized twice; both times it affected my work. One boss mistakenly thought I went to rehab and I chose not to correct her—I wasn’t “out” yet. The second boss hadn’t yet read my work, but I told her anyway. She thanked me for sharing my secret. I explained it wasn’t a secret—many people knew. The fact that you could be schizophrenic and have it not be a secret shocked her.

Secret or not, sharing this information has been scary. There is at least one job I think I would have been more likely to get without having published my poetry collection. There is also at least one job I think I got because of the book.

Getting jobs has only been the beginning: I’m also affected once I have one. Sometimes, the boss wants to know what kind of “sick” you are. In that moment, you have to decide whether or not to say “The voices are particularly bad today.” 

 I don’t want to give the cookie-cutter response “If they don’t want all of me, they don’t deserve any of me,” but I will say this: I work hard. My schizophrenia has made me work hard. When I was so sick that I had the common delusion that nothing was real, including fast food nachos, I still worked at a restaurant where I bagged chip after chip.

As someone who has worked in mental health, I am aware not just personally, but also professionally, how hard it is for people with mental health disabilities to find a job. When the job search is combined with the homelessness, poverty, drug abuse, or simply an increase in medical appointments that goes with having a mental health disability, I watched person after person struggle.

But I have also seen many people get jobs. I’ve even worked at length to help people publish stories about their mental health disabilities. And I tell them it’s a great idea—because it is. For me, I’m not going to change my online presence for the voices in my head or the voices without.

---

Kerenza Ryan (she/her) is schizophrenic (and doesn’t mind labeling herself as such) as well as having celiac disease and PTSD. She is a kindergarten teacher and a ghostwriter; her work can be found on her website. When not writing or teaching, she enjoys reading, hiking, and lazing around with her girlfriend, something her girlfriend calls “potatoing.”