Low Income and Schizophrenia

My brother told me that very few wealthy people are diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

Is this true?

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I’m not wealthy,

But I live well in an expensive part of California.

Mostly because my husband has a good job (hopefully it survives COVID).

I’m unable to earn a decent income myself.

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I would think so. Schizophrenia often happens at a young age. Preventing people from working and earning lots of money.

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Maybe they bought off their doctor because it’s an unpopular diagnosis.

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I guess you can also live in an affluent area with less transient activity to harass your mind.

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Lol!

It pays to be a woman sometimes. Men have it rough.

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Yeah, I think @anon12381882 got it. Schizophrenia commonly starts at a young age. Doesn’t give you much of a chance to go to college or get a good job to earn money.

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Wealthy people don’t live in tiny apartments with neighbors to distract them and get them double thinking.

Money really does buy you more peace of mind, I suppose.

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Oh yes. We’d be renting a house right now to get away from neighbours if the economy hadn’t turned into one giant, floating turd. Could definitely use some peace from the idiots next door.

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Many poor ppl don’t have schizophrenia.
There is a lot of other factors that contribute to poverty. Schizophrenia is just one of them.
@TomCat has schizophrenia and earns much more than what the average healthy ppl make.

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I would say he’s an outlier given he got schizophrenia at a late age.

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I would gather that my brother is correct…that low income and Schizophrenia is fairly common.

Also addiction issues can play into it. Not to say that wealthy individuals also don’t have different afflictions…just not Sz.

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I thought that expensive hookers would be a fun addiction to have until Mrs. Squirrel bopped me one. Really need to use my inside voice more.

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Ha, it’s not just me!

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When we moved to this town it was just as a bunch of other people moved in as the major employer was on a hiring spree. Meant that there were slim pickings. We’ve got half a duplex. We didn’t want to buy a home as the prices got inflated by 25% all at once (they’ve since dropped about 35% so good call on our part). The renters on the other side are … something else. We try to be polite and avoid as much as possible.

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That’s too bad. When my family lived in a duplex when I was in fourth grade, we lucked out and got almost literally the best neighbors I ever had.

I remember how I hated having neighbors when I lived in a apartment in Sweden.

They probably hated having me as a neighbor too as I screamed at the voices every day and listened to music at all hours etc

Money can help give more peace of mind I agree.

To not have to worry about paying rent, Internet, or having noisy disturbing neighbors etc

I rather live in a house.
Best home I ever had was with my x n the girls.
It’s the only place I felt at home n it was a house out in the country.

I was sleeping in my car for three weeks but that was because I was paranoid etc I had a apartment.

It seems lots of people get schizophrenia when they are at university or high school?

So as you guys say they are not able to get a highly paid job perhaps.

I’m thankful to be on disability pension and get help from family to get cheaper rent.
I couldn’t afford to pay full rent anywhere and my sacred neighs agistment I don’t think and I rather keep her of course as she’s the platonic love of my life.

My mum doesn’t want me to tell anyone I have schizophrenia because she denies the diagnosis despite over seven psychiatrists have diagnosed me.
My mum thinks I have Aspergers.nothing else.

She thinks it is embarrassing ugly diagnosis and my family want it to not be spoken of I think or not to tell people about it.

I met a woman who was a designer and shop boutique owner and was rich but then she had psychotic episode and lost all her friends.she said they only loved her when she was in her boutique but when she couldn’t work anymore they were nolonger her friends.they only wanted her clothes and fanciness of her that she was considered cool to know.that changed quickly.

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Yes, your statement is true. There is a direct correlation between people with schizophrenia and poverty.

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Of those we know about yeah. Of those with a presumably mild condition that does not require much or any treatment few people know.

From my experience its atypical for there not to be some sort of drug use involved with onset of schizophrenia. I was the first person to not have a criminal record that my lawyer for the court hearing going over my involuntary hospitalization had had. I never really spoke with him, but thats what he told my mom.

I think that what ever caused it in me was stress, emotionally. My parents were divorced and my mother was the morally superior but financially inferior parent so she got custody my dad was at fault in the divorce and generally we were just kids trying to love two differently flawed parents. My mom has a strong work ethic but I think academia was torture for her so menial labor in a factory was what she could handle.

Factories in small town america are a dying breed and she struggled through NAFTA caused outsourcing. Between that and just growing up poor she didn’t have enough emotional softness in her to be very loving, while my dad was very loving in the short sporadic interactions we had. Emotionally fulfilling. So it was very stressful.

I developed depression in middle school (now that I look back on it thats what it was) and barely managed to develop out of it into highschool. Homework was a mountain weighing on me every day with more piling up and I didn’t have resources to help me manage. I lied to my mom daily and felt huge amounts of shame and guilt. School in the mid 2000s expected hours of commitment to vigurously mentally draining challenging (as appropriate of course for development) work and I couldn’t hack it.

My part time job at KFC (one of the notoriously crappy fast food joints) was way less stressful even though I was working in what I think was a poor performing store and I morally felt obligated to do my best for the owners, whom are just relatively wealthy chain owners using it for retirement money and such. I did that for half a year, and then I got paranoid that for some reason I would be fired. I was scared of getting fired and what it would do to my record so I quit. I felt shame again and fell back into depression I was unemployed and a leech on my mother and brother for a year. I couldn’t identify the emotional problem and I used entertainment to escape. I was constantly berated for not looking for a job, emotionally guilted for the strain I put on my family. I didn’t know I had an illness called depression. Then I got a job at walmart. That was a good time. I was a cart pusher. I was saving money again ( hadn’t spent my savings account money in the year of unemployment) My family life improved. I was outside, doing something physical with almost no negative interactions with people. It was a perfect menial job to recover from depression. I worked the job mercilessly, I did my absolute best to be the best employee I could be. I smiled constantly and knew that it could improve my mood.

I noticed I was having trouble socializing when I had in store duties and was attempting to transition into the store when I found I was cognitively impaired. I’d played deceptively complex fast paced FPS shooters, various genres of books, and programs on the computer, but I was struggling to learn a device that was simple enough for the other workers to engage with.

This was a weird subtle thing going on that I just brushed off, I enjoyed my out door freedom from managerial oversight. My bosses were just glad I showed up for days in the rain.

Then the rain started bothering me, and I was dreading work and I called out several times in a week and then I was calling out for reasons that were delusional. I had my psychotic break.

There really wasn’t room in there for a successful college education, and a well paying blue collar tech school job to enrich my social security. So now I’m hovering at the bottom of what SSDI provides and toughing it out. I’m trying to rehabilitate and find a path to long term success while I have “the freedom” to live on 720 dollars a month in a small rural town without a drivers license.

The upside of coming out of this is that I have a lot of life left to live and a lot of room for improvement. My depression has finally been addressed and I’m challenging myself with games in new ways to try to hold the cognitive level that I still have for the long term.

My life story doesn’t amount to much, but its here on the forum in this post if it helps it helps.

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