MARCH 2021
Editor: Denise Nelson
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CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. |
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If you have a loved one who is struggling and need someone to talk to, please call our helplines:
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Office Cell Phone: 559-967-6168
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Visalia Contact: Ralph, 559-627-1306
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Porterville Contact: Donna, 559-280-5258
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CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. |
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If you need someone to talk to who understands what you're going through, please call:
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Tulare County Warm Line: 1-877-306-2413 (if you're not in crisis but need someone to talk to)
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Tulare County Crisis Line: 1-800-320-1616
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My Voice Media Center is holding some classes on zoom. The Speakers Bureau group is now meeting twice a month. For information, contact Olivia at 559-802-3266. |
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Two T-Shirt Design Contests |
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My Voice Media Center is needing a design for both No Stigma Speakers Bureau (NSSB) and My Voice Media Center. They want it on an 8 ½ by 11 inch piece of paper. The winner of each contest will win $100.00 cash.
All mental health program participants are welcome (sorry no staff). Turn in date is between now and April 2nd.
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THANK YOU FROM NAMI TULARE COUNTY |
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RESEARCH WEEKLY: Changing Job Markets and Serious Mental Illness
By Elizabeth Hancq
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Having a meaningful job that gives one a sense of purpose, regardless of what that job may be, is something most people want. Work, especially work which one finds productive and fulfilling, promotes better well-being and higher quality of life. This is especially true for people with serious mental illness. Previous research has shown that work plays a large role in community integration and quality of life and can improve mental illness symptoms.
However, there is an extremely high unemployment rate in individuals with serious mental illness. One estimate suggests that as few as 12% of people with schizophrenia in the public mental health system are employed. There are multiple barriers to obtaining employment for people with serious mental illness that stem from impairments due to the illness itself as well as the way employment is structured in our society. These barriers may be evolving due to the shift in the labor market in the United States in the past 20 years.
There is no question that labor markets are changing at a rapid pace, especially due to new technology. This evolution has also shifted the skills necessary for employment opportunities as automations and artificial
intelligence have made entire job sectors obsolete. Questions remain about how this shift in the labor market may disadvantage people with serious mental illness.
New research published this month in Psychiatric Services, led by Harvard Medical School health policy expert Richard Frank, attempts to answer some of the questions around how the shift in labor markets may impact people with serious mental illness. Specifically, the study authors sought to address whether people with serious mental illness are likely to work in job classes that are declining compared to those that may be growing.
The authors used data from the National Health Interview Survey
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as well as the Occupational Information Network database to examine changes in patterns of employment for people with mental illness from 1997 to 2017. They grouped occupations by the broad types of skills required and examples of job classes that fall into those categories: 1) routine cognitive (filing clerks, book-keepers), routine manual (warehouse packing), non-routine analytical (computer coding, engineering), non-routine inter-personal (nursing), and non-routine manual (certified nursing assistant). The authors predict that the routine job classes, which are most prone for automation, will continue to decline, whereas the demand for non-routine job classes will increase.
People with serious mental illness were much less likely to work in any capacity compared to the rest of the population, with more than two-thirds of people not working during 2015-2017, according to their results. For individuals with serious mental illness who did work, they were much more likely to be in the routine job classes, with 12.1% working in routine cognitive jobs in 2015-2017.
The proportion of people with serious mental illness who were not working increased 10.4% over the 20-year period. Much of the declines in employment were in job sectors that are in decline overall, with little offset by increases in employment in the other job markets. This suggests “a large segment of people with mental health conditions has been and continues to be employed in jobs that have been vanishing and are projected to continue to disappear,” the authors write.
Instead of shifting toward job classes that are growing, a larger proportion of people with serious mental illness are not working at all. The authors suggest that supported employment programs may need to adapt their pro-grams due to the changing labor market so that people with severe mental illness have the skills necessary for the jobs that are available. The authors also suggest that new adaptations for workplace accommodations in the Americans with Disabilities Act could promote continued employment for people with mental illness.
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Source(s): Frank, R. G., et al. (2021, February). Jobs for people with mental health conditions: Trends and prospects. Psychiatric Services. Elizabeth Hancq is the director of research at the Treatment Advocacy Center.
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We all talk to ourselves throughout the day. Our minds are busy talking to us, answering back, and having pretend conversations with someone else. What supports us or causes angst isn't the self-talk, but what we say and how we say it. Positive, constructive self-talk boosts our confidence, and helps us remember things, rehearse potential conversations, and problem-solve. It only becomes a problem when we talk to ourselves in critical, harsh ways that tear us down and cause painful emotions.
Your inner talk and the beliefs they echo have great power over your health and every aspect of your life. They have the power to make you feel happy or sad, to define your past and to shape your future. They influence your health, how you feel physically and your risk of disease or getting well.
Did you know...?
You may hear with your two ears, but it is the inner talk and the power of thoughts between those two ears that has the most impact on your feelings and all aspects of your life.
You talk to yourself all the time, even when you are not consciously aware of it. What you say to yourself has found its way into your head from a lifetime of sub-conscious programming and exposure to others. Even though you may believe all your thoughts are your own, the truth is that many thoughts and beliefs are passed down through your genetic makeup, your ancestry, author-ity figures and the media.
Self-talk takes many forms and may even sound like different voices. Listen closely; you may notice voices inside your head that sound authoritative, childish, abusive, tender, and/or awesomely divine. The words you speak to yourself may be negative, positive or neutral. What you tell yourself is often a mixture of truth and fallacy. They include judgments and beliefs about yourself and the world that you believe and accept as absolute truth, but often are not. They reflect your perspectives and are the filters you view the world with.
Some of your beliefs are so ingrained in your subconscious programming that you do not even know they are in your minds, or why. For instance, did you know that tall men are often viewed as more competent than short men?
How Inner Talk Affects Your Life
Can you think of any way your inner talk doesn't affect how you experience life?
Listen to your inner talk and it will give you a clear view into your real perceptions and beliefs. Then notice how those perceptions and beliefs influence what you think about yourself, others, and your circumstances.
Back in my college days, I witnessed first-hand just how conditioned we are by certain beliefs and how they influence our decisions and self-esteem. As a psychology class experiment, I con-ducted a survey of fellow students using photos of women to see which ones were viewed as happier and more successful. The results were clear — the attractive women hands down received the most votes. No surprise there, but what did surprise those surveyed was that they were comparing photos of the same women. The only difference was how they looked before and after a makeover.
Here are some other examples of common conditioned subcons-cious programming you may find influencing what you tell yourself:
- Do you find yourself lending more credence to what a man says, or someone with a deeper voice?
- Do you think a doctor automatic-ally knows more about healthy living than a layman?
- Do you ever hear yourself say that there is safety in numbers? Or that it is better to be thin? How about expensive things are better?
- Do you tell yourself you have to be nice or play small? Can you see why you may not always want to believe your inner talk?
Your thoughts, emotions and actions influence you and your life choices and actions in a continuous cycle. When you disrupt the cycle by changing what you tell yourself, you change how you act and experience life. This is why so many teachers of manifesting suggest using affirmations and visualization to point you in the direction of what you want and open you to those possibilities.
Inner Talk and Your Health
When it comes to health and life choices, your belief systems, and the inner talk that springs from them, have more power than you may think.
For example, the power of thoughts to create spontaneous healing or on the flip side to cause negative side effects with sham treatments is such a bane to researchers that they have to allow for positive placebos and negative placebos during clinical trials. They know when the sub-conscious mind believes some-thing, it makes it happen, even when it defies logic. Beliefs about healing and health care are so powerful that even color influences research results. Blue pills mean downers, right?
Your inner talk has the ability to directly affect your health. New research supports what James Allen wrote in his book, As a Man Thinketh, over 100 years ago. Your body obeys your mind. Disease, health and circumstances often
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have their roots in your subconscious belief systems. Body cells respond to your perceptions and emotions, as do your moods and energy levels. Diet may help, but it is not as powerful an influence as your mind.
Your true thoughts and beliefs affect your health indirectly as well.
An example of the power of your thoughts
You tell yourself, "I am so tired (fact), I have too much work to do (opinion). It would be nice if hubby helped (opinion)". You feel overwhelmed and angry. Your body responds with tummy butterflies and tight shoulders (emotions and feelings). You react by snapping at hubby, and cleaning in a fury (actions). The action you do not see is your body churning out health damaging stress hormones. The next round of thoughts is likely to be even more negative. And so, since results mirror what you believe, the downward spirals continue.
Note that, for the most part, your subconscious programming is running this show. You may not be consciously choosing it at all, even though your conscious mind may lend its support.
The good news is, this same flow applies to positive self-talk, creating upward spirals. It is also within your control to use your conscious mind to interrupt the flow of stinking thinking and turn it around.
Mastering the Power of Thought and Inner Talk
The key to mastering your mindset and inner talk, and ultimately your emotions, actions and results is to take control of what you hear between your two ears, instead of letting it control you.
Although there will always be an undercurrent of programming operating beyond your awareness, there is plenty for you to observe and influence.
Listen closely when you are talking to yourself. Choose to believe what you think when it is supportive of your highest interests and challenge the rest. Do you really believe that your troubles are everyone else's fault, or there's nothing you can do to feel better?
Tell yourself the truth, even if you do not believe it or like it. Fake it until you do believe it. Eventually your subconscious will get on board. If you write down your thoughts and read them back to yourself (maybe pretend they belong to someone else), you may get a better idea if they are thoughts that are helping or hindering, or if they are rational or nonsensical.
When your inner talk eludes you, look at the emotions and feelings you are experiencing, your actions, and the results you are getting. How are you feeling — happy, sad, angry, passive? What are you doing or not doing? Your emotions and actions will provide strong clues about your belief systems and how you are unconsciously talking to yourself.
You can spend a lot of time analyzing your inner talk, but what really matters is the impact those thoughts have on your life. Realize that talking to yourself is really talking to your Self. Your spirit and your subconscious mind listen and respond accordingly.
What you believe, and therefore tell yourself, guides you to make wise decisions, or those based on fear and old subconscious programs. They can cause you to either continue habits and behaviors that keep you on the road to poor health, or they can help you create a healthier, happier life.
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Family Support: We’re all in this Together
The main challenges in the early phase of treatment are fear, denial, and stigma. People with bipolar are often reluctant to give up the “great high”, increased energy and inflated self-esteem they feel when in a manic mood zone. But they also may feat the stigma against having a mental health condition and receiving treatment for it. Facing fears, denial, and stigma alongside your loved one builds a spirit of confronting the bipolar condition, instead of confronting the person. For example, fear of losing control is common. So rather than saying, “You’re in denial about bipolar,” it’s better to say something like, “I know this diagnosis is difficult for you. What are you afraid of losing if you go to treatment?” An open conversation, especially with the help of a professional, can support positive feelings that no one is alone in the treatment process.
In post-stabilization therapy, all can benefit from what I call the “Grand Bargain”, this means everyone agrees to keep each other apprised of how they feel treatment is going — without thinking that everything about the person is about bipolar. When a person with bipolar is having an emotional reaction to stress, it’s easy to quickly ask. “Are you taking your meds?” People with a mental health condition need the freedom to share emotions, challenges, and life issues honestly without worrying about feeling judged that everything about them is because of their condition. Through the Grand Bargain, I encourage loved ones to instead say something like, “You seem to be having a lot of stress lately. Is there something going on that I can help you with?”
When family members support open dialogue about mental health illnesses — along with everything else that makes the person who they truly are — fear and shame are replaced with a new sense of trust and hope for the future.
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Source(s): Bp , Winter, 2019, Michael G Pipich, MS. LMFT, is a psychotherapist author of How Patients and Families Can Take Control of Bipolar Disorder. He practices in Denver, Colorado.
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NAMI Tulare County works closely with other mental health organizations in our community. These organizations provide supportive, stigma-free environments and peer-led services for individuals who are working towards wellness and recovery.
Visit our Calendars Page for more information about the activities these organizations are offering for March 2021.
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Did you know there are many different ways you can help raise awareness and improve the lives of people impacted by mental illness?
Learn the different ways to support NAMI Tulare County and why it's so important to get involved.
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“It doesn’t matter how big and how long my tunnel is. I can see the light at the end. But, if I walk looking at my shoes, I cannot see the light.”
— Carlos A., Familia a Familia, Teacher Trainer, 2011
It is time for each of us to look up from our shoes and walk with purpose. Our actions change lives. Share your experiences...
SHARE NAMI... MAKE A DIFFERENCE
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Ralph Nelson, President
Sandra Juarez, Vice President
Mary Mederos, Treasurer
Kathy Farrell, Secretary
Donna Grigsby
Karen Mabry
Bruce Nicotero
Elizabeth Vander Meer
Ivy Jones
Ray Lara
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Office Hours: Tuesday-Friday 8:00am-2:30pm
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