May is Mental Health Awareness Month, offering a moment to recognize its significance and to highlight how sharing lived experiences can foster understanding.
With their permission, we are sharing the experience of a patient who works in the Oregon State Hospital’s woodshop, which is offered as part of the hospital’s vocational services program. Through the program, patients learn skills in paid jobs across the hospital to prepare them for their next steps after they’re discharged.
The goal is to not only teach skills, but to build confidence. As the patient explains in the video, having access to a work program “helps me to feel like I’m being productive with my time … it’s not all just wasted doing time.” He shared that from the standpoint of self‑esteem and feeling good about himself, the opportunity to work truly helps.
Through the woodshop program, patients craft furniture and planters which are sold by the hospital and a local retail partner, Cooper Creek Mercantile in Keizer. The narrator in the video describes how patients create “chairs, tables, benches and planters shaped like animals,” but emphasizes that the most meaningful part of the program is how it helps patients “shape confidence, purpose and hope in their recovery journey.” Skills like sanding or following a template become metaphors for the recovery process—smoothing out tough days, learning patience, trusting the process, and building strong foundations.
The patient also shared how the job helps him see progress in his recovery: “Not everybody has a job in here. So… it helps to show me that I’m on my way to feeling better, getting better, being trusted again, and that much closer to being able to get back out into the community and reintegrate.” He adds that the woodshop continues to give him new things to learn, helping him feel like he is expanding—and keeping sharp—his woodworking skills.
Learn more about Oregon State Hospital at osh.oregon.gov.