Bernie’s story: Change the Story

Bernie’s story is one of how disability can be an advantage, empowering the beholder to embrace it and thrive. Get up close and personal with her manuscript – a piece she has written as a therapy for her bi-polar. This is a story of how meaningful work gives a sense of purpose to people with disability and to those who employ them.

Video Transcript:

Bernie: When I’m suffering from manic episodes, it is like I’m spaced out. Reality retreats. I experience extravagant and devilish enthusiasm. My name’s Bernie Shaw. My mental health condition is bipolar mood disorder, used to be called manic depression. Bipolar is extreme lows and extreme highs. I started writing when I was 16 years old. I was awake most nights handwriting poems and songs. It helps me release. I was diagnosed when I was 28, so I’ve reached a point where I use all my skills that I’ve learned to live as well as I can every day.

Gill: Her personal and lived experience means that she can easily relate to the people who we work with. I’m Jill Townsend. I’m a service manager with Neami National, a national mental health service about getting people back into work or something meaningful to do. We employ people from a diverse range of experiences, including people who have experienced mental ill health. My role at Neami is operational support. It can involve all sorts of things. I answer all the phones at work. We process invoices. The residents come up a lot. We’ve got to help them out. We basically keep everything running.

Bernie: It took me 20 years to get to the position I’m now in. It gets me out of the house and makes me feel like I’ve done something. My last job, I was bullied there, and I thought keeping quiet was the way to go, but I was starting to feel very isolated.

Michelle: She definitely wasn’t as confident as she is now. She’s growing, and she can’t be happier. She cannot stop saying how happy she is at work. I’m Michelle Schofield. I work for Work Link, and I’m a recruitment partner. We’re a disability employment service. We’ve been around a long time. A lot of local employers know us. Because we’re small, we really know our clients, so it really helps with job matching.

Gill: I went to Work Link because I needed to do a really quick recruitment for a maternity leave position, and it just seemed to make sense to me for a company like Neami to put your money where your mouth is and to go to an agency that will provide somebody with a mental illness a job. What it also meant is that they’ve done all of the recruitment for me. They found somebody who was a perfect match for the job. Plus, Bernie gets support while she is working and working with us.

Bernie: I love it there. I’ve disclosed I’ve got bipolar. They’re very supportive. That’s what they do. They work with mentally ill people, and just the vibe in the office is very calm, very relaxing. Everyone’s job is to care.

Gill: If you employ somebody who’s got a mental illness, they actually do want to work. And so it’s been really hard for them to get work, so to get a job, they’re going to work very hard at their job. Bernie is very, very intelligent. I can see her going a long way.

Bernie: With my new job, I’m actually the happiest I’ve been in years. The most important thing in having a mental illness is you need support at home from your family and friends, and I’ve been very lucky with my family and my parents being so supportive. But my mum is my idol, my hero, and the most important person in my life.