Due to the nature of my work as a clinical psychologist, I often come across people who are disabled people who have received a disability group for mental illness. And this, unfortunately, is a very large segment of the population. It would probably be wrong to generalize this category, despite their identical status, because all these people are different and individual, but they are united by common difficulties and problems and, in my opinion, this disability does not always help them. The majority of people observed in a psychoneurological dispensary and having a chronic mental illness are an extremely unprotected category and here’s why. Predicting the development and course of a disease is extremely difficult and requires enormous experience. Determining how many hospitalizations there will be and how often, what the consequences will be, whether a person will remain able to work, whether he will be able to take care of his family, and more - none of the doctors and medical workers can immediately answer all these questions. In my practice, there have been cases of very stable remission and almost complete social adaptation, even after repeated hospitalizations and the development of the disease over 10 years. However, recently, very often, already in early adolescence after several hospitalizations, there may be a lack of long-term remission and an associated disruption of social connections and loss of work. Therefore, sooner or later, a person with a mental disorder and his family are faced with the question: do they become disabled or not? So: there are 3 disability groups in total. In the first group of disabilities, a person is completely dependent on other people, incapable of independent movement, communication and control of his behavior. The milder second group of disability assumes that a person, with the help of other persons: is capable of self-service, communication, control of his actions, orientation in time and space, as well as work in special conditions. The criteria for disability group 3 are almost the same as for the second, but here the emphasis is on social security. Often, after several hospitalizations and the absence of remission, a person is offered to register a disability for a while in order to, as it were, socially protect him, since he is temporarily unable to work. In most such cases, he receives a second disability group and a pension, which allows him to exist minimally and provide for his life. Further, the picture does not change... As a rule, a person continues to live on pension funds and remain disabled, without being rehabilitated and without trying to find a job, or get a new specialty and return to society again, because there is state “help”. At the same time, the institution and the system do not at all contribute to rehabilitation, but on the contrary, as early as possible they offer him to become such - a disabled person, first, and then, as if, not understanding what to do with it, they leave him in this status... There are only a few people who have mental disorders with and without a disability group, who are aware of them, but know how to live with them and continue to work, look for work, suffer failures, striving to change their lives, albeit without proper and necessary healthcare support, taking every step with great pain, but those who do not want to remain in this permanent “disabled” status. I can honestly say: “I am proud of these people!” References: 1. Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of February 20, 2006 No. 95 “On the procedure and conditions for recognizing a person as disabled”