“I’m a Better Person When I’m Working”: Supportive Workplaces, Mental Illness, and Recovery

This chapter focuses on the recovery-related benefits of supportive workplaces for Canadians with psychiatric disabilities recovering in the community. There has been little research to date on the efficacy of the social enterprise model in providing people with psychiatric disabilities with supportive and sustainable employment. One exception is a study by Williams et al., which examined the experiences of workers employed within a social enterprise in Australia. The chapter uses the language of disability, because it allows focusing attention on the characteristics of the social enterprise workplace as one arena of recovery. It also examines the recovery-related benefits of the social enterprise model, and the supportive workplaces that they make available, from the perspective of workers with psychiatric disabilities in Ontario, Canada. The chapter is based on research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).