AMurdoc

I've been working in the field for about 8 years and I can tell you the biggest issue we have with keeping people is that they are not nearly compensated financially as much as they should be. The current town I'm in you can easily get paid much more working at McDonalds or Walmart than working in direct care. Our company is for profit and they always blame the wages on the cost of living, insisting that they can't increase wages. Meanwhile, when each house is constantly short staffed everyone else around them are needed to pick up hours which easily leads to burn out and turn over.

I was working overnights at a house with young women with MI (aggressive/violent/suicidal). The current pay for that house is $10/hr. The shifts were 10p-7am. I was the only overnight person working for 4 months in a row. I had about 2 days off a month (other people in the house covered those nights for me). I elected to pick up those hours because I needed the money but I was never really the same after that. It was beyond exhausting and I needed to switch to a less difficult house after being there for 3 years.

Because they can't compete financially with basically McDonalds, our company will take a lot of people who are not very qualified. Those people get weeded out quick (also leading to turn over).

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I'm not OP but I've worked with several clients that have schizophrenia and my brother was diagnosed with it. I personally believe the biggest misconception about schizophrenia is that people who have it are violent. There are some that are but the majority of the people I've worked with that have it are terrified out of their minds most of the time because of some of the violent hallucinations they see daily.

My brother once ran home to my mom practically screaming and crying because he witnessed a horrible car accident where a girl had died in the street. He was so upset because the girl was lying there dead and no one was doing anything to help her or call the police and he wanted my mom to call. My mom went to the location of the accident and asked everyone around if there had been one - she didn't seen any evidence of it. That was one of his more vivid hallucinations. Another story, my brother had a constant "person" with him at all times. He just accepted it from a young age. He named that person because he felt like if he was always going to be with him he deserved a name. He was also a very capable human being. He wrote and published a book about his experiences, he was obsessed with reading and writing poetry and music.

Edit: He ODed in 2012. If anyone is curious about what a book written by someone with schizophrenia is like, this is his book http://www.amazon.com/Scars-Prove-Memoir-Brian-Kannas/dp/1434999505/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1448134709&sr=8-2&keywords=the+scars+to+prove+it

If you have concerns you should definitely try to seek out professional advice. When my brother had really bad moments he would "see" patterns in the newspaper, like it was in some elaborate code only he could read. If he was watching TV he'd think they were talking directly to him. In the moment he'd be convinced that they were talking to him but looking back later he knew that wasn't possible.

He talks about it a little in his book. You can read some of it on the "Look Inside". He was diagnosed a few years before he died and once we knew what it was I'd try to ask him questions about it. Sometimes he'd be really open and other times he wouldn't want to talk about it. He told me at one point it was like there were constantly people in the next room having a conversation. He couldn't quite tell what they were saying but he could hear them talking. Rationally, he knew they weren't there but at the same time, they were. For him they were. I've always viewed it that way. His brain was sending him signals that told him people were there, whether or not they were in reality, in his reality they were.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Scars-Prove-It-Memoir/dp/1434999505

Edit: I just wanted to add, if you think you might have schizophrenia I really don't think it's something you can overcome on your own. Financially it might be hard to seek medical/therapeutic treatment but if it's truly schizophrenia it's the best shot you have at overcoming it.

I have also worked with clients that have schizophrenia and my brother had it. I think it's possible to realize you might be beginning to show symptoms (just depends on the person - with women I believe it can show up later). But most of the clients I worked with either didn't understand that that was what was happening to them or they were in denial about it (just due to fear of the diagnosis). For many it starts at a young age.

My brother was diagnosed when he was in his late 20s and by that point he had self medicated with drugs and alcohol most of his life. He had had auditory and visual hallucinations since he was probably around 10 years old. For him it was too late to properly treat his schizophrenia with medication. He did go on medication but he couldn't overcome his substance abuse and ended up ODing. He was somewhat high functioning (he wrote and published a book). At times he had been able to hold down jobs though never for very long. He was able to keep the schizophrenia hidden from people. If you talked to him you'd never know he had it.

Most of my experience with clients had symptoms from fairly young ages and obviously didn't have the knowledge when it initially started to understand what was happening to them. They just dealt with it the best way they could at the time (which isn't necessarily the most healthy).