The aim of the presentation is to explore state socialist disability policy in Bulgaria, focusing specifically on psychiatric disability. I argue that it departed – at least to a certain extent – from the established approach to disability under state socialism (1944–89), which was largely based on conceptualising disability as inability to work. The specificities of psychiatric disability and of its relationship with the social environment eventually drove home the fact that this solely work-based approach was inadequate and that certain features of the social environment had to be taken into account. They were recognised as disabling and oppressive, and more importantly, they were identified as factors that had to be transformed. Firstly, I will briefly sketch the socialist approach to disability. Then I focus on the reality of (re)insertion of people with psychiatric diagnoses into employment and show that despite the great expectations, the socialist system turned out to be incapable of organising their effective rehabilitation through work. Against this background, I try to demonstrate how the awareness of the harmful impact of the environment on patients gradually undermined the official approach to disability and called into question the focus solely on productive labour.