A RANT: The world does not owe you anything!!

I could get flamed over this-but thats ok

I have spent my career working with the disabled. Physical, Mental Health, Mental Retardation.

Currently I am in the Mental Health Field as a social worker and I have a few clients who are extremely entitled. Just give me my check, I dont want to work-I am crazy so who cares, I cant do anything.. Wrong O, people can function with a Mental Illness but they dont want to hear that.

Well on NPR this morning, they interviewed the Spanish Baseball announcer for The Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He is fucking Blind but is a baseball announcer. A few weeks ago driving home. I see a guy in a wheel chair cutting his grass. He would push the mower a foot, roll his chair up and push it another foot and on and on and on.

That is what keeps me going in this field- little glimmers of self-fullfillment.

DDQM

Edit spelling and grammer

to do your work.

I see disabled people every day in the apartment complex where I live, going to work at the same time I am, one heavy guy struggling to get into the van, from a wheel chair, always says good morning, or the blind lady who occasionally asks strangers at the mail area to describe her mail. One of our disabled recently showed off a new wheel chair which he is making payments on from his job. My neighbor admired it, noting that she would soon have to get one as things were difficult with her walker. This lady actually works in your field, she works counseling teenagers with mental health issues. Occasionally she has vists from a young woman who helps her with housework. Struggle is a routine thing for my neighbors. They don't complain, they don't resent, they are lovely caring neighbors.

Having struggled with depression myself, I know it can be very debilitating, however, with the excellent medicine now available, I don't see why your patients wouldn't want to be valuable members of society.

and I am frustrated. They are very intellegent people, but they let their ilness manage them not the other way around. Zoloft and cocaine dont mix!! Everyone on this blue ball struggles with MI sometime intheir lives-but a few select people just want to be babied and have their butts wiped. RANT

and I am by no means coming down on the disabled. Their are some who are just to sick to contribute. a small percentage.

DDQM

overwhelming? Folks with cyclic mental health conditions can get mighty sick and tired of doing well, building up their hopes, getting jobs, apartments, relationships, etc. Only to have it come crashing down on them, yet again, and they end up back in the hospital, lose everything that they've worked for, and then going back to square one to start the process all over again.

I think it would be heroic to keep coming back to try again. I think most folks would be very tired of it and just want the easy way out. Self-medicating with drugs and alcohol don't help the situation, but there's plenty of folks who don't have a clinical diagnosis who abuse stuff all the same.

I understand where you're coming from Demman, I'm in the same field for 23 years now. It's extraordinarily frustrating. It's heartbreaking - I once had two clients, women in their 50's, who were as normal as you or I when they were in their good cycle. They had kids, drove, joined churches, formed card clubs, etc. Then once or twice a year their illness would kick in. And I saw these lovely dignified, ladies arrested for preaching at the local KFC, hauled to jail, screaming the whole way. I saw them strip naked and run down the street in their quiet little neighborhood. I saw them taken to the mental hospital. I saw the look of utter despair on their faces when they realized what had happened, and that they were back to square one yet again. But damn if they didn't persevere.

I'd have given up. There's only so much people can put themselves through.

I really agree.

I also agree alot of ppl seem to think other people owe them help

:toast:

thanks :) :party:

Those lazy types could be given one last opportunity to get their broken lives back together or ZAP! Off with their worthless heads.

PMA (POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE) of fuck off!

Rock on sister!

I kind of doubt your credentials in the field when you say something like "He is fucking blind". At any rate if it is true you sound burned out and should maybe see a career counselor.

six years college. Post graduate liscensure for two two years. Certified mental Health Crisis worker for emegency hospitalization. Something physicians cannot even do.


BTW- I quess you dont cuss, or get frustrated. Nooo not you. Read the spirit of what I was writing about


DDQM

and I found myself saying "Oh my Gosh, he's F*CKING BLIND and he's that good?!?!?!?!".

I think it was just a reaction. The dude's play by play was a-freaking-mazing. He sounded like a Brazilian soccer commentator, and this is freaking baseball - the slowest game ever!

david

I'm on that road myself. I have schizoaffective disorder and I don't receive aid from the government. I'll be going back to school this fall to finish up my degree. From there on, who knows? As long as I keep taking my meds, I should be okay.

I've been hospitalized three times for this illness. I was misdiagnosed the first time and only got the correct diagnosis a year ago. I stopped taking my meds five months after the second time because of lethargy and weight gain. Now I've got some new meds and finally I'm feeling good. But I've run across a lot of people who have a similar diagnosis as me and are receiving Social Security benefits because they are considered disabled. It makes me wonder if they could be doing more to help themselves. But, then again, I've gotten a lot of help from family members that many folks may not be able to get. So there's that to consider.

They can be doing more.


DDQM

My sister has been partially paralyzed for 6 years. She has a walker, a wheelchair, and can go anywhere on a bus for free. Instead of taking advantage of her free time to do something fun or constructive she sits on the phone all day complaining. I've tried everything to get her going, but she is more paralyzed by fear than the stroke. Some people are happy in their misery, and there is not a lot you can do to help if they don't want to be helped. Whenever she complains that she can't do something (like learning the computer, wtf?) because of her disability, I remind her that there are mountain climbers with NO legs, and she has one good arm and one good leg. But the universe is against her, she thinks.

There is absolutely no reason why someone who has a physical or mental disability to go out there and work.

But you start throwing a combination of these things together with mental illness and it's a whole new ballpark. Unfortunately our health system and ESPECIALLY our mental health system is not funded enough to give these people help to overcome these obstacles and becoming a functioning part of our society.

It's a losing battle, focus on those who want help and don't let those who refuse it bring you down!

"What are you, blind?! Uh, never mind..."

I guess


DDQM

the fact that some truly can't. IT also doesn't change the fact that while one person with altered abilities gets a break, many don't...the problems are multi-factorial.

I say this because your post smacks a bit of the "welfare queen" notion that people are just sitting around with their disability wanting to be rewarded for it which may be the case in some cases but mostly is not.
I too deal with disabled people who had great earning capacity only to abruptly find themselves no longer capable for anything except greeter at Wal Mart which does NOT pay a living wage unless one has SOME supplemental income.

Further, if we are going to go after society's ills...let's talk about those newly displaced 6 figure income earners whose only REAL disability is that they don't want to work for a bit less, spend a bit less and live a bit less lavishly....there are some able bodied people capable of work.

My only real issue with your post is it leaves the reader with the impression that disabled people are a bunch of freeloaders. Not at all the case in my 20 plus years dealing with them..most would trade their eye teeth to have their old capabilities back.

Finally, we live in a society that has DIMINISHED not increased mental health assistance. Once the aid in getting back on the right track ( without simply throwing drugs at them) matches the level of epidemic present...perhaps I will feel differently...right now for the vast majority of citizens, counseling exists for the wealthy and the poor are on their own to cause a breakthrough or left to some very often callous social workers who collapse every case into the next one ( and why not..they see so many per counselor)

But I donot believe in the welfare queen notion. and yes services have been severly cut in my state. I just believe it is wrong to hide behind a disability or use it as an excuse. I am seeing that alot on my caseload right now.


DDQM

another. If you weren't overworked you might have the space to cut through what looks like laziness to the hopelessness THEY are feeling. I suspect you are feeling it too to some degree. I go there now and then too.

Didn't mean to flame..hope you didn't take it that way.

Xo
T

I'm a Mental Health Tech on an ICU psych ward, and it is irritating beyond belief that a lot of people who have what I call Axis I: Acute, Chronic, Passive Dependency Syndrome, Axis II: Personality Disorder Dependence Disorder take up valuable bed space which should go to folks like this some poor, sick person who was found naked in a ditch filled with freezing water last winter.

We need to support the halt and the lame and take care of the chronically mentally ill, but for heaven's sake, in a truly just society folks who merely abuse the system should be ridden out of town on a rail.

Grrr.

Why should everyone have to be supercrip? I am sorry. I do not want to spend my life fighting to hold down a job which would sap all of my time and energy. When people have limited health and energy, something has to go. Now I realize that some people feel there is no purpose to life unless they work. Fine. But I don't see anything particularly admirable in spending limited time and energy to mow the lawn and being left with nothing to enjoy life with. Not everyone can "function" with a mental or physical illness. Time and energy is limited. While the guy in the wheelchair is fighting with his lawnmower and doing what someone else could just as well have done in a few minutes -- it takes my partner five minutes to mow a lawn which it would take me all day (or more, with recovery time) to mow -- well, to me, that just doesn't make sense.

You want to take people who are already cheated of energy, already not going to live so long, and have them spend what little energy they have earning permission to live, which is what money is in this society? For me, that sucks.

As for the addicts, I don't know what to say except that, do you really want addicts active in their addiction working in YOUR place of business endangering YOUR safety? I wouldn't, thank you very much.

There are not enough jobs out there to begin with. With unemployment sky high, I fail to see any purpose in forcing everyone to work. Exhaustion does not ennoble the spirit. It cheats the spirit of time to enjoy what is good, beautiful, and true.

Probably there are some who should be working who are not working...but there are also many who are working who probably shouldn't be. The world is imperfect. But I'm not going to pretend that mowing a lawn is any great gesture of self fulfillment. Do you feel fulfilled when mowing a lawn, or is it only fulfilling when a disabled person does it?

in which the vast majority of people with disabilities get on with their lives, while the small number of whiners gravitate to your office so they can whine and complain.

In our case, it means we need to be doing more outreach: for instance, the guy mowing his lawn might qualify for chore services. However, it doesn't sound like he'd come in to an office to ask for them. The kind of person who is most motivated to come to an office on his or her own is -- you got it -- the one who is expecting to be handed something.

It's an occupational hazard. The road that starts with believing that these few are representative of all people with disabilities leads straight to Burnout City.

:thumbsup:

People HAVE to be responsible and should be encouraged to make an effort to get by in this world. I would think that people would WANT to do so, for their own sake if not for the sake of society.

I'm glad you get those little "glimmers" now and again. :) :bounce:

-- Bu$h*, the Rethugnicans, and the fast-track management bums at almost any Fortune 500 company.

Lose the election? Daddy's buddies on the Supreme Court will put you in. Or -- in industry -- Mr. Whippersnapper Whitebread the fast-track boy mismanages his department & fails to meet his deliverables? No problem. His buddies in top management will fire & blacklist somebody who made a breakthru on a shoestring, give young Mr. Whitebread the credit and promote him.

So the "world owes me a living" attitude might be seeping down from the top to those on the bottom? I'm not surprised. But those at the top leech a hell of a lot more out of society than the few bad apples at the bottom ever will.

Vitruvius

P.S. JanMichael's 'humane eugenics program' (post 5) has a certain appeal -- but if and only if it's applied first to the bums at the top. Which will never never happen.

Which is one more reason I'm against eugenics programs of any kind -- they're always applied to the wrong people.