Though a former patient receives personal
consideration, he finds it difficult to obtain employment. No
fair-minded man can find fault with this condition of affairs, for an
inherent dread of insanity leads to distrust of one who has had a
mental breakdown. Nevertheless, the attitude is mistaken. Perhaps one
reason for this lack of confidence is to be found in the lack of
confidence which a former patient often feels in himself. Confidence
begets confidence, and those men and women who survive mental illness
should attack their problem as though their absence had been occasioned
by any one of the many circumstances which may interrupt the career of
a person whose mind has never been other than sound. I can testify to
the efficacy of this course, for it is the one I pursued. And I think
that I have thus far met with as great a degree of success as I might
have reasonably expected had my career never been all but fatally
interrupted.
Discharged from the State Hospital in September, 1903, late in October
of that same year I went to New York.
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