How easy is it to find a job as a schizophrenic?
I left my home country and now teach English in Taiwan. I’m not saying I am good at such things, but how are we discriminated against?
You don’t have to disclose your illness to anyone.
You better have everything managed well enough that the illness won’t hinder your performance.
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I applied to be a schizophrenic in 1980. I passed the entrance exam and 35 years later my career as a schizophrenic is still going strong. I tried to switch careers ten years ago because I heard there was an opening to be a bi-polar, but the depressed guy did better in his interview and now he is now a level 3 bipolar.
Ignore this if you want until you get a serious answer.
But I have paranoid schizophrenia and I have worked most of the last 35 years. But all of my jobs have been unskilled entry level positions. I have worked in restaurants, department stores, and doing labor jobs.
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Good one!
Balance.
Jobs cause stress for everyone so know what your triggers are and what you can do to manage things. Catch little things and diffuse them so they don’t become big things.
A big struggle for me has always been the balance of I need a job (or in the past be in school) to make me go places and feel like I was actually doing something against feeling overwhelmed. Having nothing to do can be its own prison. Our brains will decide we need to listen to their crap. If you find a job you like and it’s not overwhelming it should be a great treatment in its own. Good luck!
Hey can’t we promote schizophrenia as an interesting subject to the public in general?
Let’s not marginalize ourselves. Do we not have something to give to society? The line between insanity and genius is definitely acknowledged as being blurred. A cliche but true.
All my work know is that I have an illness that I am on meds for. They don’t know what. Although I have family work there and they know and support me. Can be very difficult at times, but I have been given Diazepam again, so I am hoping that will help when I get bad days.
Sorry to hear about your condition. Yet there is a tendency to see people like us as being weak or unstable.
I hope you can focus on the “bad days” and think and be influenced by something positive.
Concentrate on the good things: compassion, equality and validity. This includes yourself. I still struggle myself. Yet who is perfect? Good luck.
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Even if there is no genius factor it still gives a unique perspective and a different take on problem solving. It is interesting but as with anything, you have to sell it and make it so that someone wants to learn more. If they see no benefit to themselves it doesn’t matter how interesting we may think it is. That problem is not unique to schizophrenia. The stigma that surrounds schiz is hard to write over, especially if no one cares to hear about it. So many people think it’s much different than it is, or that the people afflicted are not able to contribute in many ways. I’ve found that if you find a generally open minded person, they will listen and respect you. They really won’t be able to understand though, and it’s unfair to expect them to. That doesn’t mean they can’t value us or love us or see us as potential partners. It’s breaking down that first wall that’s hard. Once people know you have it you really seem to have to go into quite a bit of personal details to get them to let go of their opinions.
As a female, I have seen members of my community become aggressive/predatorial toward female coworkers. As I get older, now at early 40s, I witness male coworkers TOTALLY acting inappropriately at work/education/church trying to bully women in the community. Things at some local jobs, predatorial male sexual harassers are retained at companies who just run through cheap female labor every 6 months…Some places WILL NOT LET A SINGLE WOMAN work there, the lady will get tortured and sometimes ruined…in some cases, the office POS tried to stalk her for relationship after getting her fired. Local educators are teaching management workshops on how to terminate people on medical leave…Women are being forced into mental care after leaving relationships, called crazy by the male that is done with them/(or rejected) and ruined for a while, sometimes unable to work due to mental problems. There is NO WAY locally in courts or policing to ditch any unwanted male that won’t leave you alone, leaving some women resorting to dating someone else to be left alone or just moving. Many of the ruined women are leaving community after being ruined at multiple jobs, lost their home for 10+ years and car won’t even run out of here due to local crooked car repair guys…these things just hit the women in threes. Women screwed out of the jobs are almost always denied unemployment, most run through their retirement accounts …
Jobs here are just paying too little to bother with it – work environment, few legal defenses any more, aggressive pests/predators in community and wages that won’t pay for cost of living alone. Funny, after the locals began to leave, saw lots more people hired from out of town, screwed and left within a year. Found out this just happens in some smaller cities…
Some of the churches here have worked on ‘healing’ of schizo symptoms leaving their members almost nuts sometimes and stalking/verbally harassing people who got into mental care & needed SSDI…Many of these filed for SSDI themselves and could not wait for an approval of benefits so the hatred and passive aggression is terrible force to recon with in this community if you ended up on SSDI. There is SO much anger to tap. This hatred just adds to the toxic work place causing a ‘hostile work environment’ where some mentally ill professionals think there is a ‘cause’ for their own symptoms and pursue a specific coworker for ruin…Some are so messed up, they think their employer is the problem and they will work on ruining the employer financially by ruining equipment or not sending out billings to cause revenue drop…Sitting at a restaurant and an old fart couple starts to discuss disability payments and ‘some people should be taken out and shot for going on disability payments’, is an example of some of the ugly people who may be working at the next desk. Some communities made so many of these folks in the under 35 crowd, they interrogate a visitor about his employment to find out source of income to determine how to treat a new stranger – Some cities have so many people who act like this, local business owners had a lot of people they just could not hire without a huge risk to business so hiring out-of-towners was only solution. Outsiders were lured into the community only to find a zombie army of local youth who are passive aggressive/predatorial who jealously preyed on the new workers who came to town calling the crap ‘drama’ and torture of these new workers began if person could not handle it without much response or tried to ask questions. Destruction of private property/vandalisms/theft/fires/burglaries/worse happened when some of the local crazies blamed a new local for causing more mental symptoms for the locals if a treated schizo person moved there to work…Groups of kids roved poor neighborhoods in gangs of 10+ harassing new workers as an initiation, threatening new people who moved there to work. People who left were told discussion of any local’s behaviors would result in retaliation…many times social problems with your new city’s screwed up people.
Some bigger communities have managed to form an apartheid system of separation for the people who were actively psychotic a lot…these people were tortured out of the school and any advancement they sought, told they must work in restaurant or retail harassing some of the unwelcome customers. Most of the skilled jobs went to the older adults who would not act crazy or got along with the REALLY aggressive predatorial office Alpha Top Dog. As these retire, the foreigners and people from out of town had to take the employment, tolerating the stiffling bull-crap of the community’s ruined called ‘drama’. Sadly, the fast food poverty caste frequently had to resort to drug dealing to pay the bills after working for fast food wages in city cost of living area. All sorts of people dealt drugs to survive, but no one left the drug dealer’s ranks unless in jail or worse. Not easy to quit the drug dealing culture…Some middle class women were misled into relationships with a new man who tried to shack up quickly, then informed the woman she would be living in a drug house.
I became aware of smaller communities that would advertise for their jobs in regional newspapers luring in females who tried to leave the city for calmer life. Some of these women, sometimes ladies hired repeatedly for same job, became target for local drug dealers, were tormented until a nervous break resulted and man tried to ride the woman’s SSDI check. Local police would lock women who argued about the drugs up in mental hospital at own expense whenever needed…This is way area got new women. Some small communities do protect their abusers and a new resident to town will be pursued for vandalism/theft at home or work stoppages/stolen work equipment to make new residents compliant to local abuser’s demands.
Some workplaces will just create an annoying environment like group of coworkers who sat there babbling crazy talk to each other for days, especially if you ever discuss SSDI check, your diagnosis, worry aloud or share much about your personal life. While other situations are great, just horribly short staffing and terribly low pay being my only problems with it…great coworkers can still be found if you work hard as a rule, show good nature/patience and do not complain much. Some places will have the coworkers acting nutty if you discuss any of the community ‘drama’ after you moved to a sick community.
Males who are confrontational are tortured out, fired and harassed by all kinds of strangers. Sometimes the next job will be ruined or equipment stolen if the male continues to complain about local abusers/harassment, even if he moved.
If you ever found anything wrong at a job, you need to keep it quiet if you cannot resolve the problem with management/coworkers. Talking about it in community can result in unwanted attention for some from the wrong kinds of people…Some communities run such a sick place, people are encouraged to only share positive information and never refer to anything negative where you feel you got screwed/mistreated or the problem may come back to haunt you. If you just leave these situations quietly, the troubled people would leave it alone…
Just look for a job anywhere in the world. Or just jump on a plane. I did but then…not a good idea… maybe
So you have been discriminated against your so- called condition?
Never. I rarely tell anyone I have an illness. I’ve had therapists and psychiatrists tell me that if they hadn’t seen my diagnosis in my medical chart that they would not be able to tell that
I have schizophrenia. Outside of friends and family, I’ve told very few people and the people I have told have treated me as normal.
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Thanks,so a professional doctor told you so? A brain scan? Abnormal behavior ?
I believe you.
Anyway do you find it a hindrance or something useful?
Thanks,so a professional doctor told you so? A brain scan? Abnormal behavior ?
I believe you.
Anyway do you find it a hindrance or something useful?
Hey, I posted on the noticeboard but I think it is important. Forgive me if I am wrong.
True, true, true and true- just filling in the requirements but what you say is TRUE.