What symptoms of schizophrenia, or side affects of medication, prevent one from being able to hold a job ?
For me personally I might be able to work for a week, but then i could have a bad episode and end up in a ward and miss work.
Though, What are ALL the possible things someone with schizophrenia diagnosis could have prevent them from being able to work ?
Two things
1: I get very depressed around monthly cycle
2: I get paranoia and voices and I have crippling anxiety
I do volunteer work instead
In volunteer work not as much press to be on time and can do as little or much as you want
the tactile hallucinations alone keep me from sleeping and waking up on time because it feels like bugs are crawling on me when I try to sleep, only happens when I’m on medication.
although voices talking to me while I’m trying to sleep also keep me from sleeping.
also since I have visual hallucinations I had to give up my driver’s license and my CDL license so I can’t even get to a job.
since my schizophrenia became a 24-7 thing I can’t even sleep without sleeping pills and it is hard to wakeup from a drugged sleep.
that’s just a few of them. the worst is the voices would outsmart me and trick me into believing false things.
the antipsychotic meds are also known as tranquilizers, hard to have any energy to work when I’m taking something that slows down my metabolism.
Symptoms are always there esp anxiety and no motivation right now. I fight to function at max right now. Like everything i do takes so much effort. But also illness is unpredictable and brain can’t handle stress. And cognitive exec functioning can be really bad some days. Today I had appt, yesterday I went to the gym… but haven’t washed my hair in almost a week bc one thing for another. If I go to the gym I may not do well in the evening or maybe not present for kids or maybe can’t sleep. But I got to do one therapy for my health. Just celebrate the small goals and think about days that I do more or enjoy more. Remind myself I went on a date with husband or ran errands with him to stay positive - wor king is not only measure of success. Motivation and some other things really bad right now but reasons for not working some days worse than others. Some days more active. I need to be alone and quiet and no tasks for periods every day often 5 to 6 hours. Writing on this site makes me feel at least I have done something human or connected somehow
Appointments take a lot of energy to get to.
the negative symptoms and anxiety
Delusions distort perception of reality and impair judgment and decision making ability, that’s why I want to work with things and not people.
the biggest thing I emphasized on my application for SSDI was that I was unable to focus on anything longer than five minutes. I got it first try.
I got fired twice because I couldn’t focus and was making mistakes due to racing thoughts.
One of the side effects of AP medication is that it disrupts your body temperature regulation mechanisms. They make you more susceptible to heat stroke in summer and hypothermia in winter. When I was in the army I was a little bit above average in dealing with the weather. Now I am a weather wimp. If it wasn’t for these side effects I would quite happily dig ditches outside.
I’m just not fast enough for fast food jobs. I work as fast as I can, but I’m too slow. I’m sure the antipsychotics don’t help with this one too.
I’ve always had trouble learning new tasks on the job. Managers hate me because I am slow.
Any job that involves interaction with the public is impossible for me. I start out well, but then I get giddy and start saying things that scare people.
just getting a job is harder than actually having a job.
but how would I know?
same. that’s how I act in real-life public, and why I’m home.
Everybody experiences schizophrenia differently. And though we may have roughly the same symptoms, they can vary in intensity or they vary in how disabling they are in the individual.
Example: one of the commonest symptoms is hearing voices. But I work with a guy now who hears voices and talks to them and he grimaces and is a little scary but he is a good worker and a nice guy. But voices prevent many other people from working. I don’t hear voices but I am paranoid and I have delusions but I’ve been at my job for 5 years. Other peoples paranoia or delusions might prevent them from working.
Another factor is what stage of life someone is in. An article posted on here just last week reported that as time goes by for a schizophrenic he may experience his symptoms differently or in a different form. So symptoms that prevent you from working now may get better or less stressful. And its true of other symptoms too.
I will use another example: I was friends with a neighbor who had paranoid schizophrenia. I was working at a small business owned by a husband and wife. My friend went to a day program. I ended up working there for four years while my friend attended the day program for four years. He heard voices. When I knew him, he told me he would never work again. I knew him for a few years and then I moved away and e lost touch.
When I was about 40 I had stopped working after working for almost 25 years because of my symptoms. I joined a day program where w had groups, art therapy, classes. My ex-neighbor was there and we caught up with each other about what had happened to us during the ten years we hadn’t seen each other. It turns out after I quit the job, he got the job after me and worked for three years there!
And then I attended my day program for a year and then went back into the work force and I have been working almost steadily to this day.
So I made several points here which you understand.
Social anxiety
low motivation
low initiative
Even without those the following would restrict what kind of job I could do
Slow processing speed
visual spatial deficits
Executive functioning deficits (NB organising and planning)
Difficulty with constructional/manual/practical tasks
Same here …!!!
visual impairment like misreading things because the words keep changing
you never really know when and were schizophrenia may attack you when working is a big fear in its self…