But I don't know what the numbers look like at any given point in time. I imagine someone who understands the U1-6 scale would probably have a slightly better view.
But my point was merely because a study that says overall people who don't have jobs watch tv shouldn't be taken as a statement of unemployed laziness until someone has actually taken demographic data of the people within that group, as "unemployed" is a huge group. I can think of numerous possibly-counted-as-unemployed groups where one of the few common denominator activities would be TV, like, say, students.
We do. In fact, many people who I personally know have gotten off social security and back into the workforce. People with mental illness. They even allow you to make a small amount of money while collecting social security to get some people slowly back in the workforce. In fact, I would say most people I know returned to the workforce. I'd like to see some stats on that.
It is a very complicated situation with a lot of variables. I think wage stagnation and a decrease in collective bargaining may be a part of it.
And there are also people with crippling depression, fibromyalgia, and/or pain disorders.
>I'm particularly interested in barriers to employment for people with mental illness. When someone has a leg amputated there is a period where they are rehabilitating and having prosthetics fitted, but then they can return to work. From time to time they may have problems with their stump and they will need new prosthetics. We don't expect those people to never work again. So it's weird to me why we don't see severe mental illness as havig similar times of illness and wellness.
Maybe it's better in the UK, but in many countries, employers simply don't want to hire someone with a history of chronic semi-disability. This can be particularly bad in the United States, where disability and health insurances are provided by the employer instead of the state.
Among my symptoms are visual hallucinations, paranoia, delusions (other than paranoid delusions), depression which can be suicidal, actual suicide attempts - no suicide completions so far :-D - a euphoric state known as mania, which can feel good to some extent but, when extreme, is far worse than all the other symptoms - sleep disturbances (at times insomnia, other times hypersomnia), catatonia and flat affect, that is, an inability to outwardly express my emotions. My flat affect makes it difficult to connect to other people, which itself can lead to depression.
However, the specific reason that I work as a coder, is that computer programming accomodates my illness in a way that physics does not. (My degree is in Physics, not Computer Science.)
I hated coding with a passion at my first full-time programming job, I wasn't any good at it, and fully intended to do just about anything else once I was able to find a "real job".
However I happened to notice that I could still write software even when I was floridly paranoid. I mean like that NAZIs having Panzer exercises in the office parking lot. I didn't see any soldiers or weaponry when I looked directly out the window but when I turned away I could feel their presence.
I decided to stick with programming in part because of that, as well as some other reasons.
These days I am contemplating going back to complete my Physics PhD. What I find these days is rampant age discrimination, as well as no one believing that my resume is for real.
I wrote my first computer program in 1976, in FORTRAN, with a pencil on a coding form, then typed it into a paper teletype terminal, where it ran on an IBM 360 mainframe. That box was so expensive that the University of Idaho had just that one computer for the entire campus to share. I'm pretty sure it had magnetic core memory.
Sorry - this line triggers a knee jerk response from me. Please feel free to ignore the rest of this post.
There are very few people who are so disabled they are unable to work.
There are people who face discrimination; or who have learnt patterns of livingthat are not compatible with work; or people who have learned helplessness. Employers are understandably nervous about employig someone with no work in the past three years (and even if they're not nervous they usually get to chose between the person with large gaps and the person with recent work history).
Modern approaches to getting people with disability back into work concentrate on "place then support" - you get someone a jon and then you provide support to them and their employer to keep them in that job. This is prefered to "train then place" where you put people through work-preparation courses and then eventually try to get them a job and don't support them in work.
I'm particularly interested in barriers to employment for people with mental illness. When someone has a leg amputated there is a period where they are rehabilitating and having prosthetics fitted, but then they can return to work. From time to time they may have problems with their stump and they will need new prosthetics. We don't expect those people to never work again. So it's weird to me why we don't see severe mental illness as havig similar times of illness and wellness.
This organisation has good quality information about curret best practice. http://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/employment/index.asp...