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I have found employment for people with schizophrenia to be one of the most difficult dimensions of reintegration in the community. Employment is generally a competitive environment and many people with schizophrenia are at a disadvantage on an open playing field and for a variety of reasons. Unemployment of people with schizophrenia is probably 80-90%. With optimal treatment and support that can be cut in half, and with a good first psychotic episode program it can be reduced even more although how much more is not known just yet.
In males schizophrenia often emerges in late adolescence somewhere between high school and career training, whether that be university, college or an apprenticeship. It is common to basically lose a few years at that point as the disease is diagnosed and an optimal treatment is initiated. If employment is thought of as a horse race, people with schizophrenia are generally late out of the starting gate. Sometimes the first challenge is one of simply completing a high school diploma. The later the onset of schizophrenia, the more employment training and experience an individual has acquired and the less assistance they need with employment generally. If they had no career training by the time the illness becomes manifest it becomes considerably more difficult to acquire that career training even after symptoms of the illness are controlled by medication. Young adults are generally expected to be self supporting, even while they are acquiring career training. Someone disabled, even temporarily, by schizophrenia symptoms, needs financial support of some sort, either from their parents at younger ages, or from government benefits. In Ontario the ODSP benefit plan provides the equivalent of full time minimum wage employment. Since minimum wage employment is generally not career employment, an individual has very little incentive to leave a relatively secure benefit income for unskilled and relatively marginal employment. Why wash dishes 8 hours a day when you can stay at home and receive the same amount of money? Financial support becomes a trap of sorts; the more benefits you provide to someone disabled by schizophrenia the more of a trap the benefits becomes. If you don't provide adequate benefits people suffer in abject poverty and often for the rest of their lives. Even something basic like medication is $100-$800 a month, and Clozapine would be unaffordable for almost anyone who had to pay that monthly bill themselves. Governments typically have a lot of trouble appreciating the complexity of reemployment. In Ontario
The copyright of the article Employment and Schizophrenia in Schizophrenia is owned by . Permission to republish Employment and Schizophrenia in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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