At the beginning of the Saks Institute 2019 Spring Symposium, facilitator Elyn Saks quotes Freud: “Love and work…work and love, that’s all there is.” What people want, Elyn reminds us, is to love and to work. For people living with chronic mental health conditions, however, achieving the “work” part of this equation is often not so simple. However smart, however skilled, however creative, brain health conditions can be a major hurdle in an individual’s ability to obtain secure employment. The good news is that there are organizations working to change this.
David Leon, Executive Director of Painted Brain—one of the organizations represented at the Symposium—addressed this issue head-on: “The political and economic system that we live in isn’t geared towards the workers, it’s geared towards the corporations. At Painted Brain, we are turning this model upside down by thinking about how to employ people based on their strengths, as opposed to trying to get them to slot into existing skills.”
What is Painted Brain? It is an organization where everyone is a peer, and everyone is a contributor. It is a place where people in the professional world who are living with mental health conditions and people with these challenges who would like to be employed—can come together, contribute, and move into leadership positions.
Painted Brain is a place where skills can translate into job opportunities. It is an inclusive model, where jobs are created based on an individual’s strengths. Contributing is a core value of this wonderful organization.
“When someone walks into the Community Center, the two questions we always ask are, ‘What do you want to do today?’ and ‘What can you share with other members of the community so you can give back and demonstrate your own leadership abilities?’” said David Leon.
Painted Brain has been in operation since 2004, since it began as a literary magazine of the same name. It became a nonprofit in 2017, and has since run groups to create opportunities for people living with brain health conditions all across Los Angeles, particularly in the fields of technology and the arts.
“What we’re trying to create is a community of techies,” Co-founder and CTO David Israelian told the panel, which was received by laughs from the audience. But Painted Brain is much more than a community of techies. Based on the “Clubhouse” work-training model, Painted Brain is an organization where employees can be open about their mental health conditions without worrying that it will put their careers at risk. For this reason, it often attracts employees—from clinicians to social workers to interns–who identify as having a brain health condition.
Painted Brain is more than a hub for professionals: it is a unique leadership movement where people can find purpose and be honest about their vulnerabilities at the same time. In this way, Painted Brain is ahead of its time, but the founders’ commitment to educating the public on their program, through panels like the Saks Symposium, gives us hope that Painted Brain will be found in every city and will not be one-of-a-kind for long.
