Individuals with Mental and Emotional Disabilities
With an aging workforce and a significant labor and skill shortage employers are more willing than ever to hire job candidates that they might not have considered in the past. Persons with mental health challenges are among this group and are often referred to as the new labor pool.
Mental health professionals know that work is often therapeutic and stabilizing for this population. However, there are few minority groups that are less understood and more feared by employers than persons with mental illnesses. Yet, at the same time, anti-depressants are the number one medicine that employers are buying for their current workforce. Depression is the number one cause of disability in human beings over seven years old.
Attitudes towards the hiring of this population are improving along with employer-based skills and strategy for working with employees who have mental health issues. In this workshop mental health professionals will learn about the "best practice" techniques for hiring, training and accommodating persons with mental health impairments. The participants will learn more about this population, how to overcome these employment challenges, and where to go for state-of-the-art information to suggest a reasonable accommodation for specific clients and the jobs they are applying for.
Richard Pimentel will also clarify the rights of persons who have mental/emotional disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Whether the mental health professional is directly involved in client employment issues or not, every professional will benefit by understanding the changing workforce opportunities for their clients in either keeping or finding a job.
