I can't honestly answer all your questions.
To my knowledge a program cannot discriminate against someone because they have an illness so long as that illness will not affect their performance.
http://www.drc-gb.org/employers_and_service_provider.aspx
It is also unlawful for any employer to discriminate against a disabled person when choosing someone for a job or considering people for promotion, dismissal or redundancy.
However despite this several corporate jobs do discriminate but do so under the table. For example if a male comes to a job interview with long hair, and the place doesn't like it, they can say he was rejected because of some problem that had nothing to do with his hair. Any excuse can be made and told but the real reason was the hair.
IMHO, no one should be discriminated against so long as their illness/disability does not affect their job performance. IMHO, that can be properly judged based on the candidate's evaluations from their various rotations and academic performance. If they're alright, then there's not much reason to hold a patient's illness/disability against them.
However that's just my opinion. The real world doesn't work that way.
Mentioned this on the forum before. My program kicked out a resident last year who had an Axis I illness. Unfortunately for her, she also had EVERY Axis II Cluster B disorder as well (not joking) and lied, cheated, spread malicious rumors on top of doing a piss poor job at work (gave a pregnant patient a class D med without clearing it with the attending, was responsible for 3 patients coding in 1 month due to overmedication).
Her axis I was not held against her at all. Her Axis II problems though strongly were. I didn't have much sympathy when she got kicked out because by that time she had made 2 false claims of rape, made sexual approaches to several patients, wore sexually provocative clothing (navel exposed at work due to some provacative clothing) caused several codes among several other problems.
When I was asked, I said I didn't have an Axis I disorder--and that was honest. I don't. Like I said above, some of the programs dug into it in an unethical manner. Others didn't. IMHO, and I know this isn't right, you're going to have to anticipate that some of them will not be right minded about this issue and may ask, and may hold it against you. I know its wrong but I think it may happen to you if you took a year off. I took a year off and that's why they asked me if I had an Axis I.