Thank you so much for having the courage to openly discuss your relationship with a person with a mental illness.

Your calm words will, I hope, do a lot to explain what it's like.

> I think most guys, on a first date, upon hearing a young lady talk seriously about being visited by aliens, would probably find some reason to cut the evening short. I merely listened. Sally "knew" the alien visitation wasn't real. But it felt real enough to her when it happened. So I asked her to tell me about it in detail. And I listened, without passing judgment. She ultimately laughed the whole thing off, but I knew it was an important part of her reality.

Talking to people who have hallucinations or who hear voices is sometimes fascinating. Sometimes they start the conversation and you don't know that anything is different, and because they are not lying the story sounds utterly convincing. And then, maybe, some odd details start creeping in. Or maybe the story is about alien visitation and it's obviously not true from the start, even though the person telling the tale it utterly believable.

> She didn't know that when a yellow car pulled in front of her on the road, it didn't mean there was danger ahead.

At their gentlest these paranoias and delusions seem similar to everyday superstitions. I think that's what makes it harder for people to understand just how strong the feelings are.

> As a disabled person (who can't work a normal job, because of the severity of her residual symptoms), Sally gets a monthly check for $661. That's it. That's all. No more. Here you go: $661 a month, now go take care of yourself.

This is the thing I really want to talk about.

I live in the UK. We've had a variety of different disability benefits over the years. Unfortunately those benefits have not kept current with modern treatment; nor with modern political directions; and now we're in the unpleasant situation of needing to cut our massive welfare bill, but not having any suitable alternatives for people yet, and not having adequate support for disabled people.

For example, in the 1980's people with bad back were told to not move, to lie flat on their back on a firm mattress. Many people were signed off work for years because of bad back. We know now that's terrible advice. If there's no underlying illness causing the backache (and there can be serious illness causing backache) you should carefully take pain killers, and keep moving. Some exercise will help recovery, and some other exercise will prevent relapse. So, now, with bad back you might need a bit of time off work to let the pain killers start working, and then a bit of time to get the exercise going, but then you can return to work full time.

Applying that to MH problems we see that people with mood disorders like depression were cocooned away from stress. "Don't go back to work, because you'll trigger another episode of illness". But many people want to work. They do not want to live a life on benefits.

Ideally you have a programme that finds people the work they want to do, and then gives them time-unlimited support for that work. That support would be things like helping someone sort out transport; explaining to a boss what reasonable adjustments (a legal concept) means; discussion about difficulties staying in work and how to resolve those; discussion about any prejudice that is happening etc.

Such programmes exist, but are patchy and usually very busy with long wait-lists.

And because our benefits system hasn't caught up people can get caught in nasty situations. There's a variety of benefit schemes to help people get back into work, but if you're working (even with a severe, enduring MH problem) they might take the disability benefits away from you, which can then shut down other parts of your support network; and which can be very stressful for some people. Coping with complex benefit and tax systems is not helpful when you've just started your first job in 12 years.

So, while we have made a lot of progress, there is still a lot of progress to be made. I wish you and Sally all the best for the future!