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Consumers, as they are called, keep their mental illness a secret. But do they really have anything to be ashamed of?

"I'm really nervous about next Thursday," one resident of Ohel's mental health division says to another.

"Yea, so am I. Kind of makes you wish you were staying here, doesn't it?" "We'll talk about that," the Resident Manager says, rushing in to begin a community meeting.

All are assembled. There is talk of Sunday trips and day-to-day items. Then the topic of "next Thursday" comes up. Three or four residents share their feelings. The other eight listen. Next Thursday will be Thanksgiving Day. Some will relax and tell their families of the progress they are making. (Perhaps they are now working at the Ohel gift store or taking medications on their own.) They will enjoy a day off with relatives.

For others, next Thursday will have the potential for shame. It might mean being embarrassed about our job situation, where we live, why we aren't dating to get married. There will be those questions from distant cousins about those nasty side effects from psychiatric medication. "Reuven, is something wrong? Your thumb is quivering," they will ask. For some, Thanksgiving and all those other family gatherings are painful ordeals that make us tremble inside. It's funny. The cousin with whom we chomped matzoh at the kids' table has now become a source of anguish.

But with fellow residents who are also mentally ill we relax; we let our hair down. The fact that we attend a mental health-oriented program or that we're unemployed is not a source of humiliation. We don't fear questions about medication because we're all on medication. Sometimes we're therapists to one another, laughing and feeling relieved as we discover our common ground. There is aching at Ohel. It would be there whether somebody planned it that way or not. For many, inside Ohel it is safe. Outside Ohel's doors there is the potential for shame and embarrassment.

That uncomfortable feeling exists around people other than our relatives. It exists with former classmates, friendly people in shuls or batei-midrash, that best friend from camp in the summer of '79, the guy from the corner grocery who gets chummy with us....

One dreary afternoon, I walk down 13th Avenue in Boro Park with a fellow client from Ohel. My friend's "number comes up" in the form of a six-foot-one, inquisitive classmate of his from yeshiva high school, wearing a leather yarmulke.

"So what have you been doing with yourself the last 10 years, Reuven?"

"I uh.... you know, this and that. I haven't really been that busy," he mumbles toward the ground.

"Oh. O.K. Say, did you ever do anything with your math? I remember you were always good in math."

"Uh.... not really," my friend mutters back.

While my friend is uttering a silent prayer, I am off the hook. I am just a stranger to this inquirer. I cringe, knowing that "there but for the grace of G-d go I."

I wasn't always so lucky. It was my first week at Ohel. There, at the other side of the kitchen, was a classmate of mine. We both tried to deny the undeniable: I was a schizophrenic client in Ohel's mental health system and he was a counselor!

It's not the mentally ill who think it's wise to cover up their condition. Some of our leaders think it is a good idea. A prominent rabbi in the Brooklyn community thought it would be prudent of me to wait until after I was married to inform my wife that I was on anti-psychotic medication. It's not only leaders in our community. Even our empowerment program does its share of covering up. Rather than call us mentally ill, they choose to call us "consumers." These people don't all think it is a shameful thing to be mentally ill. Rather, they question how accepting others will be.

Is mental illness something to feel guilty about? The majority of experts claim that something like schizophrenia or manic depression, for example, is a genetically based disease. Of course, in Jewish law we go after the majority. Today, we see and hear people bragging that they feel no shame for things which, in fact, they should be ashamed of. I can feel accountable for my aveiros and embarrassed by my neurosis. I won't feel shame for a disease I have that is called mental illness.