Welcome to Rumbel Streep America Heilman. This is the last show in a series I produced for Vermont Public Radio called They Are Us inside Vermont's mental health care system.

Today's show is called work. Welcome. We're talking about people like us.

You know, typically in mental health you hear people say,

here, therapists, case managers, psychiatrists, they'll say, work is stressful.

It's stressful for my clients, you know.

I would say to them, if you think employment is stressful,

try unemployment.

That's Paul Miller, the co-coordinator of the Green Mountain

Workforce at Washington County Mental Health in Central Vermont. It's a

supported employment program for people with persistent mental illness, so many of them have spent time in the hospital or homeless, and all of them have struggled at times to manage their daily lives.

Paul and others like him in the state help people get meaningful jobs in the community that pay at least minimum wage.

And the idea is that work is not the result of treatment.

It's part of treatment and recovery.

Paul works with his clients therapists and case managers.

He spends time finding out what his clients are afraid of,

what they're good at, what they love.

Maybe he drives down to a client's workplace to stand outside and talk because

his clients having a bad day. In other words, it's personal, it's ongoing, and the goal is to be

successful working in the community long term.

Here's the CEO of the Brattleboro Retreat Louis Josephson.

What we used to do in community systems in the past around employment or vocational options for people with

chronic mental illnesses we'd get you make work job stuffing envelopes in the

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