“Can people with schizophrenia work?” journalist Gina Ryder recently asked on PsychCentral.com. The Answer: Absolutely! The real question is what kind of job works best for individual people.

Meaningful employment is an important aspect of the treatment model originated by Colorado Recovery founder, Richard Warner. “Work is central to the development of self-esteem and in shaping the social role of the mentally ill person,” Dr. Warner wrote in The Environment of Schizophrenia. Finding suitable employment for clients thus becomes an important part of the treatment approach.

“Outpatient clinical services are transitioning from a medical model with an illness focus to a patient-centered model with a holistic emphasis on well-being and functioning,” wrote Cohen, Hamilton, et al. in a 2016 study. “Recovery from serious mental illness has various operational definitions, but there is consensus around definitions that emphasize the ability to live a fulfilling and productive life in spite of symptoms.”

Central to that fulfilling and productive life is the ability to contribute in a meaningful way. “Treatment should include social rehabilitation,” wrote Dr. Warner. “People with schizophrenia usually need help to improve their functioning in the community. This can include training in basic living skills; assistance with a host of day-to-day tasks; and job training, job placement, and work support.”

Gina Ryder provided a list of widely accepted strategies helpful for people with schizophrenia who are trying to fulfill career goals:

• Staying away from nonprescription drugs, alcohol, stressful situations, and other triggers
• Reaching out for social support from allies
• Taking medications as directed (medication compliance)
• Practicing strategies learned from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
• Creating a soothing and simplified environment, such as clearing clutter or playing music
• Engaging in spirituality
• Focusing on well-being through exercise and diet
• Continuing education

She then offered three additional strategies that may help people with schizophrenia take action toward their career goals:

• Explore careers that work for you
• Maintain routine care
• Heal from negative past job experiences

These are the main pillars in the vocational program at Colorado Recovery. We offer a variety of vocational services to help clients with bipolar and schizophrenia with their short-term and long-term career goals, including job seeking and retention skills, career exploration, and resume creation.

To stay motivated, it is important to leave previous negative job experiences behind.

“If you’ve experienced past work struggles, such as encountering stereotypes, low performance reviews, or unfair termination, you may have internalized some discouraging beliefs that can keep you from getting back out there,” Ryder wrote.

“Defeatist beliefs and amotivation are prominent obstacles in vocational rehabilitation for people with serious mental illnesses,” wrote Mervis, Fiszdon, et al. in 2016. Defeatist beliefs are often driven by stigma and stereotypes people with mental illness still encounter on an almost daily basis.

At Colorado Recovery, treatment professionals empower their patients by giving them roads to be productive, to help them perceive a positive meaning in life, a sense of belonging and community that can significantly improve treatment outcomes.

People with mental illness can thrive in the work environment if the job is compatible with their condition. As a member of the Employment Alliance that works with the Boulder Independent Business Association, Colorado Recovery works proactively to provide employment to people with psychiatric disabilities.

The vocational workers from the participating mental health agencies provide support to the employer and the newly placed employees. On-site job coaching is provided, when needed, to ensure the success of the placement.

Our treatment facility provides the services needed to address schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other serious mental illnesses which are specific to each individual. Call us at 720-218-4068 to discuss treatment options for you or the person you would like to help.

“Schizophrenia is an often misunderstood chronic mental illness that causes psychosis,” wrote Anna Guildford in a recent article for Medical News Today

It is a “debilitating, complicated mental disorder that affects 20 million people globally.

In his book, The Environment of Schizophrenia, Colorado Recovery founder Richard Warner also described psychosis as a primary feature of schizophrenia, calling it “a severe mental disorder in which the person’s emotions, thinking, judgment, and grasp of reality are so disturbed that his or her functioning is seriously impaired.”

“People with schizophrenia have a unique combination of symptoms or experiences,” explained Guildford. They may include feeling disconnected, hallucinations, hearing voices, delusions, and confused thinking or speech.

“There is no single organic defect or infectious agent which causes schizophrenia,” wrote Dr. Warner and it remains unclear what biological mechanisms are involved. Researchers have long suspected differences in brain chemistry to be the cause of schizophrenia. People with the condition typically have differences in their neurotransmitters, i.e. chemicals that control communication within the brain.

“Growing evidence implicates synaptic proteins in the pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), intellectual disability (ID), and schizophrenia,” wrote Caldeira, Peça, and Carvalho in their 2019 study on synaptic dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders.

According to a new study by Adams, Pinotsis, Tsirlis, et.al., the imbalance of nerve cell activity responsible for the condition and its associated symptoms may result from the body trying to rebalance excitatory and inhibitory functions. Dr. Rick Adams, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Medical Image Computing at University College London, UK, explained to Medical News Today that “there is an enormous amount of indirect evidence that synaptic gain decreases in schizophrenia. This means that excitatory neurons have a reduced ability to stimulate one another.”

Dr. Adams and his colleagues used computational modeling of electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain activity and measure overall synaptic gain. They collected EEG data from 272 participants, which comprised 107 with diagnosed schizophrenia, 57 of their relatives, and 108 control participants. Each participant underwent three EEGs and a resting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Dynamic causal modeling of the EEG experiments and fMRI data showed changes in the group of people who had received a diagnosis of schizophrenia. “The altered brain waves in those with diagnosed schizophrenia occurred due to a loss of synaptic gain, or excitability,” reported Guildford. “The hallucinations and other symptoms of schizophrenia were, however, associated with loss of neural inhibition.”

“This might mean that the loss of excitation comes first, then the brain tries to compensate for this by reducing inhibition, but then this leads to hallucinations,” Adams told Medical News Today.

Despite a great deal of pharmaceutical investment, there is still not a targeted drug to treat schizophrenia by understanding the biology of the disease and identifying the receptors and processes involved. Adams believes “if future studies can establish this, it means we should be able to give treatments that change excitatory or inhibitory function at the right time and to the right people.”

Such a targeted drug to treat schizophrenia is not yet available, though, and pharmacological approaches can only be a partial solution.

“Medications are an important part of treatment but they are only part of the answer,” wrote the late Colorado Recovery founder Richard Warner, MD, in The Environment of Schizophrenia (2000). “They can reduce or eliminate positive symptoms but they have a negligible effect on negative symptoms.”

The empowerment of patients and vocational rehabilitation are equally important elements in the treatment approach at Colorado Recovery. Our program approaches mental healthcare with a focus on self-reliance through developed practiced skills. Our non-institutionalized philosophy offers comprehensive levels of care supported by an expert medical and clinical team, engaging patients in increasing community participation.

Our treatment facility provides the services needed to address schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other serious mental illnesses. Call us at 720-218-4068 to discuss treatment options for you or the person you would like to help.