In the autumn of 1993, Mark Baker was in college studying for the final year of an Arts degree in Maynooth. The previous summer he had started to feel depressed, but as the new term wore on things became more difficult. In November, his doctors recommended he take a six-week break from college. As the situation deteriorated, Baker was admitted to hospital rather than returning to Maynooth.
He was in and out of hospital six times over the next two years before his condition, eventually diagnosed as manic depression, was stabilised. Depression, demotivation and social phobia were all aspects of Baker's problems. At one stage he would buy a week's supply of cigarettes so he could avoid leaving the house so often.
It was while on another training programme, as Baker began his recovery, that he heard about Worklink. From its Blessington Street offices in Dublin, the organisation runs back-to-work schemes for people with mental and stress-related illness. These training schemes offer a bridging service for those trying to return to open employment after a period of illness.
The programme was started in 1992 as a two-year, EU-funded Horizon project set up by Schizophrenia Ireland. Since then it has continued to receive EU training funds from the National Rehabilitation Board.
Baker was attracted by the fact that Worklink "helps you to get what you want". Previously he had felt that a return to college was an option that was being ruled out for him by others.
He joined a Worklink programme in 1998 and found it helped to structure his life and motivate him towards goals which depression-induced demotivation was inhibiting. It also offered personal development and computer training to help prepare participants for open employment.
"A person suffering from an illness is going to have huge issues around confidence, self-esteem, and particularly stress," says Cillian Russell, the manager of the programme. "These factors are often initially stopping people doing the interview, but once they are placed it is really dealing with the stresses of work - the social skills of the workplace rather than the vocational skills."
For Baker the course helped him get used to interacting with people again, and having a structure to his day. "One thing I learnt which I thought was very important was that to be mentally ill was not to be guilty of any sort of crime," he says. "If it wasn't for Worklink I wouldn't be where I am now."
Currently he is working on a community employment scheme writing a newsletter on mental health issues for two Dublin voluntary groups. "It's not just Worklink that's helped me," he says. "It's the actual community employment scheme I'm on. With their training funds I've been able to do so many things I couldn't have done, like the poetry course at the Irish Writers' Centre. Things like that get you to start thinking on your feet which is how I've been able to talk now."
Already, the poetry course is bearing fruit, as Baker has just had a poem published in Poetry Ireland magazine. As well as the newsletter and his writing, he also lectures trainee nurses and occupational therapists. By explaining his experiences he hopes to give people who work with mental health patients a better insight into the sort of problems their patients are facing.
Although Baker is enjoying his work on the newsletter, he has plans to move on. "It's all very well being on a FAS-supported scheme, but at some stage you're going to have to take a leap of faith." He is glad that Worklink's doors are always open to him if he wants to go back for a cup of tea and a chat about his plans for the future.
He is thinking of going back to college, but has also been applying for jobs. Application forms, however, present a dilemma for those who have a history of mental illness: do you explain your condition to your potential employer?
"You're in a kind of limbo," says Baker, "because if you don't put it down then you look as though you've been doing nothing for two years, and if you do put it down then it's obvious that something is wrong. I put down that I was ill because then I don't have to be making up stories, but I also add that it's been three years since I was out of hospital and I'm on maintenance doses of medication.
"People with mental illness want to work; there is no doubt about that. The evidence is there in the waiting lists to get on to training programmes, the amount of people working on FAS community employment schemes and those who are working in open employment. What is required from employers is a deepening understanding of mental illness and not the stereotyping and knee-jerk reactions that often occur at interview level when you mention you were ill, even if that was a considerable time ago."
Mental illness remains something of a taboo in Ireland, and yet it is likely that we all know someone who has had problems at some stage in their life, even if they don't discuss it. For people recovering from, or dealing with, a mental illness, the importance of the opportunity to work goes far beyond the financial rewards it may offer.
"I think in our society work is what makes us; we're often judged by what we do," says Russell. "Work has two basic roles: it gives somebody something to do - at a very basic level this is important - but at a higher level it gives people a sense of worth and a sense of involvement. On the other side work provides money, which is our means of independence. When we're financially self-sufficient we can make choices that if you don't have money you can't make, and I think that's a big issue."
Compared with physical disabilities it has always been harder for organisations working in the mental health field to fight their corner in the battle for resources. As Baker suggests: "If you want people to lobby for things, it means they have to come out and say, `yes I've had mental illness'. And I just think psychiatric patients being what we are, our will is so bound up with getting through the day that we don't rally or organise ourselves or effectively lobby for government funds the way people with other disabilities do."
Baker's personal battle of will to get through the day seems on the up. That's not to say that there aren't bad days and bad moments. Two people he met on a previous scheme committed suicide.
"That's something you don't dwell on too often," he says. "I hope I never become a statistic. There have been times I've felt very strongly in that direction, but then I say to myself `what a waste'. You never know what's around the corner; you really don't."
Worklink can be contacted at 39 Blessington Street, Dublin 7. Tel 01-8601610.
www.iol.ie/lucia/worklink