Three in five mental health sufferers can work

THREE out of five people with serious mental health problems can successfully get and keep work, many at the higher end of the professions, a conference was told yesterday.

However, those with mental health difficulties had far less access to the workplace than those with physical or sensory difficulties and there was a gap in mental health between training and actually getting into the workplace, the Mental Health Ireland annual conference also heard.

MHI chief executive Brian Howard said the national mental health strategy was about returning people to their own communities and part of this had to be an opportunity to work.