The new law will prompt many of the disabled to polish their resumes and prepare to enter the job market. Mental Illness Others who frequently fall into the chronic poverty spiral are those individuals suffering mental disabilities such as depression, schizophrenia and manic depression. There is usually a dollar limit on insurance coverage for these illnesses. The onset of mental illness usually occurs in late adolescence, around college age when individuals are just coming into adulthood, Brown explained. The illness prevents them from attaining the skills and knowledge to become employed.
Effective treatment is time-consuming and expensive.
These illnesses are cyclic, Brown added. The affected person may be well for a time and then may suffer a relapse. In addition to being unemployable due to alcoholism or habitual drug use, people with chemical dependencies also run a high risk of sustaining physical injuries or getting caught up in the criminal justice system, said Vicki Decker, coordinator for the Northwest Frontier Addiction Technology Transfer Center in the Oregon Department of Human Resources. In fact, the opposite is more often the case. Dependency causes the individual to fall into poverty.