I suspect that the whole concept of 'dependency' comes through from the old asylums where people were entrapped and thus dependent as they lived their whole lives in a very narrow environment. Surely it is very hard to join solely with mainstream society as a person with a mental illness. Most people have a family, they have full time work. Yet we all know how hard it is for any person with a mental illness diagnosis to have a partner and a child, to have full time work. Instead people are sidelined to the peripheries of society. The drop in society is the hope, the place where the person with a diagnosis can find friendship and purpose. Persons with a diagnosis are often not even welcomed into volunteer work. My thought is that no one in their right mind wants to live on the utter poverty of a disability pension. No one wants to be dependent, in any terms. It is just so hard to be accepted into mainstream society. Drop in centres are a wonderful way of finding community. Lizzie
