Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 6, 2012 16:18:24 GMT -5
An acquaintance of mine has been battling manic depression for decades and it seems to be getting worse. She has a decent skill set and probably does fine work when she's employed, but the continual cycle of run up debt / get new job / get laid off / get unemployment is tightening all the time.
I don't know her all that well, so I can't really speak to how closely her specific mental illness ties into her job performance/money management issues. But from my very limited perspective, it seems like it's definitely playing a huge part. She's not on medication, for one thing. So she has days where she can't get out of bed, other days when she's climbing the walls, eating everything in sight, spending every penny she has, etc.
How have you seen (or experienced) mental illness affecting people's ability to work or manage money?
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jul 6, 2012 16:19:36 GMT -5
Why isn't she on medication?
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jul 6, 2012 16:21:24 GMT -5
I know quite a few bipolar people who are very productive in their jobs, and have been doing them for a long time. However, they take their meds religiously.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 6, 2012 16:21:43 GMT -5
Why isn't she on medication? A variety of reasons - again, I'm sure I don't know the half of the story but apparently health insurance is a huge part of it. Her spotty employment makes that a big problem (and I know these drugs do get expensive). But part of it also appears to be denial... she doesn't think she "needs" the meds, and like a lot of bipolar people, even when she has access to them she tends to stop taking them once she feels more level. And they really need to be taken on a consistent basis to work.
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Jul 6, 2012 16:27:45 GMT -5
People with those disorders really need to be on medication. The thing is, a lot of them start taking it and then start feeling better so they stop taking it and the symptoms come back.
Well, I think one of my cousins is bipolar, and not medicated. He's always had trouble keeping a job.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 6, 2012 16:42:52 GMT -5
Bipolar disease definitely needs to be medicated... I've lived with an unmedicated bipolar person (more than once) and it is NOT fun. It's a crazy roller coaster ride, and not in the good way.
Stuff like this does make me understand where posters like Shasta were coming from when they said that health care shouldn't be tied to employment. If you are mentally ill, lose your job, lose your ability to afford your meds and regular doctor visits, and start to go crazy... how on earth are you supposed to get another job?! Vicious circle.
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Angel!
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Post by Angel! on Jul 6, 2012 16:54:37 GMT -5
A good friend of mine is bi-polar & for the most part hasn't been employed for a decade. She just can't handle the stress & has a breakdown. She started receiving SSDI due to her condition a few years back. She has tried everything to control her condition, even going so far as doing ECT. But, nothing works long term. Even when she finds great meds eventually they become less effective & she is set back again searching for something else that helps.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2012 16:59:31 GMT -5
I think mental health issues are something we tend to brush off or push aside. We often blame the person suffering. I think medical help would go a great deal further if primary care docs worked closely with therapists and counselors to help their patients through these complex problems. Counseling and therapy can do a world of good and not only helps that person but also the people in that person's life who may be affected by their illness. To help them may be to help the entire family and children to succeed and be whole in life.
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lynnerself
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Post by lynnerself on Jul 6, 2012 18:29:06 GMT -5
One of the women I work with, her husband has mental problems and it has impacted them badly financially. He is a nice guy if you meet him. The first sign was just buying all kind of "toys" (quad runners) that they couldn't afford. This led to a bankruptcy. We all thought it was just bad decision making until he downward spiraled and attempted suicide. Now he is on meds, at least off and on and it is just one drama after another. He currently lost his job again, left her for while (with a very dramatic face book posting) and then came back. Right now she has taken a second job, but there is no way she can support the family.
It's interesting because at first I thought their problems were just stupidity, but actually there was some mental issue behind it all.
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TheOtherMe
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Post by TheOtherMe on Jul 6, 2012 19:18:42 GMT -5
I think mental health issues are something we tend to brush off or push aside. We often blame the person suffering. I think medical help would go a great deal further if primary care docs worked closely with therapists and counselors to help their patients through these complex problems. Counseling and therapy can do a world of good and not only helps that person but also the people in that person's life who may be affected by their illness. To help them may be to help the entire family and children to succeed and be whole in life. This is what needs to happen. I suffer from depression and it has taken me years to get my own family to comprehend that just telling me to snap out of it doesn't work. The medications from 30 years ago didn't keep me stable. Today's medications do, but it's a cocktail of meds for me and it took a long time to figure it out. Yes, once we figured it out, I felt so good, that I quit cold turkey. Learned my lesson and will never do that again as I had to go back on the meds slowly, just like in the beginning. I'm really sorry, Firebird, that your friend is not able to hold a job and probably has no insurance. She really needs to be on meds to function. Some places do have very low cost mental health facilities. I'm sure they have long waiting lists, but they are better than nothing.
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constanz22
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Post by constanz22 on Jul 6, 2012 19:46:42 GMT -5
I work in the mental health field, for the local County mental health clinic. They have to serve anyone, regardless of insurance or ability to pay, and as far as I know, this is the same all over the country. The wait really isn't that long for services. I guess paying for medication could be a problem without insurance, but, with a documented mental illness and inability to keep a job would qualify you for SSI/SSD, which comes with Medicaid to cover meds. It's just a matter of seeking out the services, but once connected, the agency should be able to help navigate the system for their patient.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2012 22:11:30 GMT -5
My mother had major mental health issues (schizophrenia, I think) and was immensely employable in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She had two careers . . . she was a switchboard operator and a waitress. She found multiple jobs fairly easily.
I don't think she was as schizophrenic as the diagnosis said, though. She functioned very well. She gave us up primarily because of some fear (true) that my older sister was in real danger of being abused. Back then, anyone who wasn't playing the "good wife" role was susceptible to that diagnosis. My ex tried to play the "you just need meds" card on me in the 1990s although I was never depressed after the divorce. I was poor and working hard, but never depressed. Add to my mom's treatment a few shocks, and I would probably have had problems as well.
There are real mentally ill patients, and my mother was probably one. She died of pneumonia as a street person. But I think there are also a lot of functionally mentally ill patients as well. My mother went downhill after she lost custody. I think we were her sanity.
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constanz22
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Post by constanz22 on Jul 7, 2012 6:13:45 GMT -5
My mother had major mental health issues (schizophrenia, I think) and was immensely employable in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She had two careers . . . she was a switchboard operator and a waitress. She found multiple jobs fairly easily. I don't think she was as schizophrenic as the diagnosis said, though. She functioned very well. She gave us up primarily because of some fear (true) that my older sister was in real danger of being abused. Back then, anyone who wasn't playing the "good wife" role was susceptible to that diagnosis. My ex tried to play the "you just need meds" card on me in the 1990s although I was never depressed after the divorce. I was poor and working hard, but never depressed. Add to my mom's treatment a few shocks, and I would probably have had problems as well. There are real mentally ill patients, and my mother was probably one. She died of pneumonia as a street person. But I think there are also a lot of functionally mentally ill patients as well. My mother went downhill after she lost custody. I think we were her sanity. Just curious...how old were you (and your siblings) when your mom lost custody? Did you go into foster care or with family? Do you feel that you were "better off"? I hope I'm not being too personal, but I've been in social work for 20 years and it's always such a delicate balance of when kids are better to remain at home or not. I currently work in a Family Preservation program where we work to keep families intact, as most studies have shown that kids are almost ALWAYS better off staying in their family of origin (except, of course, in cases of extreme abuse). I'd love to hear your perspective having lived through it.
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milee
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Post by milee on Jul 7, 2012 7:30:08 GMT -5
Constanz, when I was in training to be a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate), they emphasized those studies - showing the kids were almost always better off staying in the family - as well. I wish I had asked to see the source studies because it would be interesting for me to read the methodology, selection methods used and other components of the study. If you have links to any of these studies, please post them.
FWIW, my mother has some mental health issues as well and I can't honestly say if we would have been better off in foster care or with her. We lived in Florida, but didn't have any contact with social services and my only experience with social services was during my volunteering in Phoenix. From what I saw of the foster care in Phoenix, it would have been a toss up if it would have helped. There were a few families I dealt with that definitely would have been a fantastic alternative to our home. There were others that would have been similar to conditions in our home and a few that would have been even worse than the issues in our home. So it really would have been up to chance whether foster placement would have helped or hurt.
Food - We didn't always have food. Foster care would probably have provided food, so been helpful. I see my kids now and it's obvious how their behaviour is different when dinner is running late and they're hungry. Makes me wonder, I was sometimes a difficult kid, which hurt my relationships with peers and teachers. How much of that was personality and how much of that was just being hungry?
Shelter - The house we lived in for years didn't have A/C or heat. It was in bad shape and because it was not in a developed area, snakes and large spiders regularly found their way inside. None of that killed us, but it was scary for a kid. Foster care probably would have provided more adequate housing, but that's really just a comfort issue, not one that necessarily impacted us long term other than the fact that we couldn't make friends because there was no way we could ever have people over. Not sure if I'd have had friends over in foster care, though, either.
Family Attitude Towards College - Although my mother had issues, she also had a college degree, as did both of my grandmothers (which is unusual among women of that age). College was always emphasized and it was assumed all kids would go and all did. Not sure if that push to go to college would have been there in foster care.
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milee
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Post by milee on Jul 7, 2012 7:40:11 GMT -5
cont...
Abuse - A social worker would have noticed at least the obvious bruises we always had. Other things would not have been noticed. Probably the same in either foster care or home.
Kids Desire to Be With Family - as you've surely seen, no matter how bad a family is, kids almost always want to be with their parents. No way to describe it logically, it just is. Probably based in biology. As with the foster kids I was CASA to, if someone had asked us, of course we would have said we'd rather live at home than some unknown stranger's house.
School District - I was very lucky that a teacher had me tested for the local magnet school. I qualified, went there and that was the beginning of changing my life. It helped me get near perfect SATs, take many AP and honors classes and into great colleges. Basically, I got out and have rarely looked back. Not sure where the foster families in our area live mostly, but in Phoenix, the foster families often live in pretty rough areas of town with bad schools. If moving to a foster family meant I couldn't have gone to the magnet school, that probably would have been short term help at a very steep long term cost.
So overall, there would have been some advantages and some disadvantages to foster care.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Jul 8, 2012 9:12:52 GMT -5
My cousin is married to a woman who is bi-polar and manic. He monitors her meds and I always hope she goes before he does. They wisely chose to not have children.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2012 11:06:28 GMT -5
How have you seen (or experienced) mental illness affecting people's ability to work or manage money? Yes. I've had depression/anxiety since I was a young child. It's certainly affected my ability to work and earn money at certain points of my life. I have acquaintances that really struggle with it.
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Jul 9, 2012 9:20:25 GMT -5
How have you seen (or experienced) mental illness affecting people's ability to work or manage money?
I think there might be some of this with my older sister. She worked steadily for about 20 years, then for about five more bounced from job to job. She finally stopped working all together and applied for, and got, disability payments. She's never admitted to our family what her disability is (she seems fine to us) but I suspect it was some kind of mental illness thing. What I'm not sure about is whether this was a real issue or not.
I know DS has always been one of those people who doesn't feel she ought to have to do anything she doesn't want to do. Like cleaning her house. Or exercising or eating a balanced diet. So I don't know if she actually has a mental health issue or if she just doesn't want to work (she mentioned before that she didn't like having to get up in the morning when it was dark and cold outside and go get into her cold car).
She's also a hoarder, but there again I don't know if that's actually a disease or because she doesn't like cleaning, so never gets around to throwing anything away.
It's sad to see how unproductive her life is now. She sits around and watches TV, reads, or plays on her computer. I don't think she has many friends; about two years ago the woman she considered her best friend told her she didn't want to have anything to do with her anymore (not sure why, the reason my sister gave me doesn't sound right). Her best friend now is a functional alcoholic. It's possible DS also has a drug or alcohol problem, although she's never admitted that to me. Or she might be depressed. All I know is she's living a very sad, pretty pointless life.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Jul 9, 2012 9:43:17 GMT -5
DH has depression and it certainly affected his ability to work. He'd spend days in bed and not call in, then would get fired. He went thru a lot of jobs till I approached him about seeking help. He did and it was like a light switch had been flicked on, he was a totally different person.
About a year ago he decided he was fine and didn't need his anti-depressants so he quit cold turkey. Really messed him up. I was livid with him. He didn't like how out of control he felt so he put himself back on one of them and has been fine since then. He knows better now than to just stop taking his medication.
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ontrack
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Post by ontrack on Jul 9, 2012 9:51:43 GMT -5
Yes to the manage money part. My mother was recently formerly diagnosed bi-polar (formerly termed manic depression). My parents had money problems growing up because she would go on shopping sprees during (in hindsight we recognized) her manic phases. Add to that a QVC habit during her depressed phases, and it equals real money problems. She's doing a lot better now with counseling and medication.
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bean29
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Post by bean29 on Jul 9, 2012 10:02:50 GMT -5
My Dad is bi-polar. He was diagnosed when I was in 1st grade. His initial diagnosis was schizophrenia but was later changed to Manic depression. The reason it took several more years to diagnose the manic depression was because the Dr's did not see him in a bi-polar high - just the lows. Since SS mother was hi-functioning and educated, I wonder if she was mis-diagnosed too.
My Dad was a union construction worker. He was always able to get back to work and we were never uninsured. Mom was very careful to continue cobra payments/save for a rainy day.
Nowadays employers are quick to eliminate jobs at the first sign of trouble so I think people with mental illnesses in our modern times have many more barriers to staying healthy. Mental Health coverage has been extremely limited for many years in conventional insurance. I think the ACA kicked out the severe limits on Mental Health Care but you still need to have insurance - Dr.'s don't work for free and I think continuity of care (Dad has had 2 psychologists in about 40 years) makes a huge difference in successful treatment. Dad has been on medicare for many years and I think my Mom is still maintaining the union health coverage. My Dad does not do well on anything but lithium. They tried many of the more modern medicines but none worked out.
My Dad came to the conclusion many years ago that he needs his medicine to stay well. When he has had relapses it was that something was interfering with his med levels. The pharmacy filled a prescription wrong once. Mom did not realize it until Dad was actually in the hospital. I know once when Dad was in the hospital Mom was reviewing what was being given to Dad with the tech/nurses aid and she realized it did not match what she gave at home, so she called the Dr for clarification and they were vastly under medicating my Dad. I think the pharmacy did not have what was prescribed, so they filled it with the same medicine, different strength, but the instructions did not get updated to say dose 2x a day instead of 1x a day or some such thing.
I wish your friend well. She needs to believe that she needs to take her medicine to stay well. If not she will continue to experience highs and lows.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 9, 2012 10:23:53 GMT -5
Constanz, when I was in training to be a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate), they emphasized those studies - showing the kids were almost always better off staying in the family - as well. I wish I had asked to see the source studies because it would be interesting for me to read the methodology, selection methods used and other components of the study. If you have links to any of these studies, please post them.
I'd be curious to read the studies too, because - how can you measure something like that? You take a kid out of a home, how on earth could anyone ever say for sure if they would have really been "better off" in their original home?
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raeoflyte
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Post by raeoflyte on Jul 9, 2012 10:49:17 GMT -5
My sister was on disability for several years for depression. She still has a ton of issues, but she did get off disability and works full time plus at a regular job, and does cat grooming and pet sitting on the side for extra money.
I think her cats are a symptom of and solution to a lot of her problems, as odd as that sounds. She is supposedly down to just 18 cats (from 26), but I think at some point on disability she realized that she couldn't provide vet care for her animals and that is why she started working again. Her cats are what saved her from her last suicide attempt as well. She realized that no one else would take them in if she died, and she called for help and was hospitalized.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 9, 2012 11:01:11 GMT -5
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raeoflyte
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Post by raeoflyte on Jul 9, 2012 12:16:34 GMT -5
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 9, 2012 12:43:51 GMT -5
The smell in there must be INSANE.
I went to someone's house last weekend who had five cats and the smell of the kitty litter (which was clean, by the way) almost did me in. I was never happier that we had potty trained our kitty than I was right at that moment.
But double digit cats... Jesus... I cannot imagine.
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raeoflyte
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Post by raeoflyte on Jul 9, 2012 14:00:01 GMT -5
I haven't been to her new place in years, but I actually bought our triplex with my folks so that my sister could live in one unit. We all wanted someone closer to keep an eye on her.
It was a good arrangement for about the first year (she only had 12 cats then), but dh and I had to move because of her and the smell and to this day when either of us are really stressed we both smell cat pee.
Shockingly it was pretty easy to clean up her unit once she was out of it. Lots of airing out, new flooring, cleaned walls and fresh paint and no one could tell that there had been cats there.
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milee
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Post by milee on Jul 9, 2012 14:17:04 GMT -5
Now that would be an interesting study - the link between multiple cat ownership and mental illness. My hypothesis (based solely on personal observation of a few people and reading the Enquirer in the grocery checkout line) is that the number of cats one owns is highly correlated to the level of mental illness one has. I'm still really grumpy about the cat thing. I'm on the Board for a local not for profit and we had an assistant office manager for years that was a very sweet person - totally and completely incompetent, but very, very nice - and was somewhat covertly hoarding cats on the not for profit's grounds. She basically turned it into a sanctuary for feral cats. Since most of the cats were shy and she fed them at night, nobody knew quite how bad the problem had gotten until she left and we realized that there were over 30 and people were dropping new ones off at a rate of 1-2 a month since they'd heard this was a shelter. She's been gone for over 2 years and we're still trying to deal with the issue humanely. I like cats, but I've just about had it.
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Jul 9, 2012 14:48:52 GMT -5
Now that would be an interesting study - the link between multiple cat ownership and mental illness. My hypothesis (based solely on personal observation of a few people and reading the Enquirer in the grocery checkout line) is that the number of cats one owns is highly correlated to the level of mental illness one has. I would like to see a study like this, too. My guess is it falls under the 'hoarders' mental health thing. My sister, who I suspect has MH issues, at one time had 12 cats. Since she also hates to clean, I can only guess what her house looks like. I haven't seen her house in years, she lives on the other coast, and she trys to avoid having anyone come to her house, but I imagine it's like one of those hoarder show horror stories.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Jul 9, 2012 15:02:27 GMT -5
Now that would be an interesting study - the link between multiple cat ownership and mental illness. My hypothesis (based solely on personal observation of a few people and reading the Enquirer in the grocery checkout line) is that the number of cats one owns is highly correlated to the level of mental illness one has.
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