From: Mike.Freeman@f126.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Mike Freeman)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: depression
Date: 14 Apr 92 18:35:54 GMT
Reply-To: Mike.Freeman@f126.n105.z1.fidonet.org
Organization: FidoNet node 1:105/126 - Lawson & Reay, Vancouver WA

Index Number: 21188

[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

Dear Jeanne:

I've finally gotten around to reading your original post re the
situation with your Significant Other.  Although all the brains in the
world most certainly didn't get here when I arrived, I will take a shot
at it and see what happens as my word processor suffers.

To begin with, I've known a few people who were truly smashed by
society.  Although things are getting better, society still tends to
consider the blind person to be inferior and second-class.  The
unemployment/underemployment rate for blind adults of working age still
hovers around 70 percent and hasn't changed very much over the past few
years.  Part of this is due to the fact that rehab isn't working all
that well, part is due to the fact that new blind persons enter the work
force about as fast as jobs are created which they have been able to
wangle.  The largest part, however, is due to societal prejudices and
misconceptions as to what blindness is and what the blind can do.

The real tragedy is that often the blind themselves internalize these
feelings of inferiority and begin to believe it to the point where, as
you say, they give up.  I've known a couple of people who were quite
bright but who had been labeled not so by others and who spent years
pulling themselves up (these are blind persons, of course).

What your Significant Other needs most of all is to regain self-esteem.
You say he has naught good to say about the Council for the Blind or the
local Lighthouse.  Has he tried attending the local meetings of the
nearest chapter of the National Federation of the Blind?  If he doesn't
know where the nearest chapter is, he may call the National Center for
the Blind in Baltimore at (410)659-9314 and get the information.  The
basic philosophy of the Federation is that it is respectable to be
blind; that, with training and opportunity, the average blind person can
do the average job in the average place of business or job site -- and
do it as well as or better than his/her sighted colleagues; that the
*real* problem of blindness is not the physical disability of blindness
but the social handicap imposed by society upon the blind.  If your
Significant Other is around self-confident, caring people (or even those
striving to attain self-confidence) it is likely that some of it will
rub off on him.

I am a member of the Federation and obviously believe in it.  What I
will say next may surprise some of those who disapprove of that
organization.  If your Significant Other decides that he can't stand the
Federation (i.e., thinks we're a bunch of arrogant b**st**rds), then
urge him to attend the local ACB (American Council of the Blind) chapter
meetings -- even though he dislikes them (I sympathesize with him
there).  What he needs -- especially if he's truly suffering from
clinical depression -- is PEOPLE contact; either NFB or ACB can help.  I
prefer NFB but if it were ACB or nothing, in his case, I'd take ACB.  He
should find something he believes in; he should find something that
works for him.

As to jobs that "totals" can do -- one should rather ask what jobs blind
persons *can't* do.  Everytime we think of a job that a blind person
cannot do (other than the usual ones of truck or cab driver), we find
someone doing that job.  I used to think that the blind couldn't weld; a
few years ago I met a guy who'd been a resistance welder for GM for 30
years (he's now retired).  It's the same with other jobs.

Your Significant Other should finish college.  As sad as it is to say,
although there are many jobs he could do, more and more employers are
insisting upon college degrees.  Beling blind makes it doubly difficult;
there are fewer and fewer unskilled and semiskilled jobs available,
especially for the blind.  Although it would be better for your SO to
get a degree in something practical (can he speak both Russian and
Ukrainian?) any degree will help.  Although I have ranted against this
sort of thing in another echo, he should get involved in volunteer
activities -- NFB is only one possibility -- it looks good on a resume.
Above all, he should **do something**.  The NFB is there to help; you
are obviously there; that's two things going for him.

Now a word to you and I hope this doesn't sound like the lawyer's
technique of argument of the defense of alternatives.  If your SO won't
shape up; save yourself and get out of the relationship.  That may sound
terribly presumptuous of me and, if so, I'm very sorry.  But if he won't
get off his duff and it's pulling you down, you haven't many
alternatives.  Bear in mind a quotation from the Talmud:  "If I am not
for myself, who will be fore me?  But if I am only for myself, what am
I?  And if not now, when?"

-Mike [K7UIJ]-
... *The National Federation of the Blind is changing what it means to be blind.*
___
 * CRR QWK 1.40 *

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