Career Overview: What I Do As a Mental Health Manager
There are people across the wide spectrum of mental health who are able to live independently but need a little help along the way. This assistance is provided by a mental health professional who helps people with specific needs manage their daily lives.
We spoke with such a curator in Washington. He works with a wide range of people, but they all need supervision and help with simple tasks such as shopping for groceries, maintaining the correct medication, visiting a doctor, and more.
Tell us a little about your current job and how long you have been doing it.
I work for a mental health agency in Washington State as a curator for an Intensive Outpatient Clinic (IOP). We work with mentally ill people who have above average symptoms. Imagine someone roughly between “a screaming homeless person” and “your eccentric uncle who thinks he was abducted by aliens,” and you get a good idea of the type of population we serve. This sounds like a lot of range because it is; some days clients yell at me and other days everyone is super cool and calm.
My job in a nutshell: I help my clients meet their basic needs. I am both a taxi driver and a professional purchaser of products, and I accompany you to doctor’s appointments.
What prompted you to choose your career path?
In high school, I had many friends who had various mental illnesses, mainly depression, anxiety, and some self-harm (I suppose most people probably knew someone in high school who had some of these problems ). I really wanted to help these people, so I decided to study psychology. My first psychology course was very interesting, so I studied it in college as well. I thought that I could change the world a little and get paid for it.
How did you get a job? What kind of education and experience did you need?
To become a case manager, you really need a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Arts degree (psychology, sociology, and anthropology majors are popular, as is social work) and at least a year of experience that could be something like that. Technically, you only need to be an “agency consultant” (see next question), but the higher your education level, the higher the rate you can bill for (and the more money you can make for your agency).
After college, I worked as a direct medical staff for severe autistic men and ended up working as a manager in several nursing homes. I didn’t really like this field, so I started looking for a job in the mental health field (which takes experience) and I was able to get an interview with my current employer. I have used my many years of experience working with severely autistic men and management personnel to gain experience in patient management.
Do you need any licenses or certificates?
You need to be an affiliated advisor to an agency in Washington state, which is actually quite easy to get. You need four hours of HIV / AIDS education and you must sign a form saying that you are not a terrible person (not an arsonist, thief, etc.). You also need to have an agency that works to approve the said application. So generally, you take a job with an agency and then you have 30 days to apply for a permit.
What are you doing besides what most people see? What do you actually spend most of your time on?
I spend most of my time on the road, taking clients to the doctor’s office, shopping, and doing general errands that my clients would find it difficult to do on their own. On average, I drive 35 miles a day in the city, about two hours a day, plus or minus (not including commuting and commuting).
That is to say, behind the scenes I spend quite a lot of time behind the phone and paperwork. All customer interactions must be documented so that they can be invoiced. Money is what keeps the agency afloat; without paperwork, the agency as a whole goes bankrupt and cannot help anyone else.
What misconceptions do people often have about your job?
That it is really very difficult, and it drives us (the curator) crazy. It’s true that work is stressful. But in reality it is not that difficult. You just need to show a lot of patience to deal with people whose problems are interfering with their lives. From someone yelling at you about government (besides the fact that your eccentric uncle might be raving about Thanksgiving) to talking to someone who takes 15 minutes to fully form a thought. Patience, patience, patience.
What’s your average uptime?
On average, I work a little over 40 hours a week. The agency I work for takes very good care of its employees so that they don’t burn out. As I mentioned earlier, you will need a lot of patience to get this job done. But if you work more than 40 hours a week and don’t take a vacation, stress WILL BEGIN to you and you may soon find yourself on the other side of the host relationship.
What personal tips and shortcuts have made your job easier?
I’m using tech crap. A smartphone to check emails while I wait in the lobby for a doctor with a client, documents to keep track of my time and path, and digital leftovers (phone again) so I don’t forget a million things I need to remember every day. I prepare myself for anything that makes my job more efficient.
A tip for aspiring curators: Never take anything personally. Clients may yell at you and call you terrible names (or even try to insult you) when they are very sick (often when they have stopped taking their medication for whatever reason). You can’t take it personally. Most of them yell at their symptoms, not at you. This is because they experience mental pain that stings as much as real pain (or even more). Just imagine that you have a decent conversation while you are suffering from migraines, except that the migraines are emotional in nature. This is bad news and you can’t take what customers do personally.
What are you doing differently from your colleagues or colleagues in the same profession? What are they doing instead?
I am not much different from my colleagues because our clients strive for consistency. At my agency, we work as one team, so we all need to be on the same page when it comes to customer interactions. If I do otherwise, then my colleagues are the tips and shortcuts I listed in the last question.
One thing that sets me apart from others is my physique. Most of my colleagues are pretty petite women; this area is generally dominated by women (I would say that 75% of people in this area are women). I am a very large man who, I suppose, would make me stand out from the crowd. It also puts more sexually aggressive clients into my workload because they usually have little desire to sexually abuse someone of my size and / or gender. I was told that for this reason it is very useful to have a person on the team. My gender also sometimes works against me, as some clients are afraid of my size or feel that I am not “warm” or “loving” enough. Some clients also have a history of or male abuse and subsequent PTSD; this is rare, but there are clients I really cannot work with because they are extremely anxious or paranoid when a man is around them for more than a few minutes at a time.
What’s the worst part of a job and how do you deal with it? I am sure that when a client is experiencing difficulties, it affects the emotions.
Doubt. In my opinion, doubts are the worst part of the job. Hard example: When a client dies due to exposure (this happens to homeless people more often than most people think), it can really affect you. You start thinking, “What could I have done differently? Is it my fault that this man is dead? “It is sometimes difficult to deal with because of its gross nature. Fortunately, customers rarely die. As they do this, I remind myself that at the end of the day, the best thing I can do is offer clients the best options and try to encourage them to change their lives. I can take them to the doctor, but I cannot get them to get into the car.
It can be tough when the client is struggling, especially when the client seems to be struggling on its own. For example, substance abuse is a common problem with clients. Another challenging scenario is the medical compliance spiral. The client becomes worried about their medications and decides to stop taking them. This aggravates their symptoms and they start to spiral out of control. Hopefully they get back in line or, alternatively, voluntarily land at the hospital before doing anything illegal and / or dangerous.
Finally, as with any job, bureaucracy can be a problem. The paperwork I mentioned above can be very time consuming and very tedious, but ultimately necessary.
What is the most enjoyable part of the job?
Success. These small wins are the best part. When the client decides on their own (with your help, of course) to start saving money to buy a new guitar by giving up methamphetamine. Or when you finally find the right combination of drugs to help a client control their feelings and start looking for a job. Or the bittersweet feeling you get when you can finally defeat the system and apprehend someone dangerous. This is a tricky scenario where you know a customer is approaching disaster and the only thing you can do safely is try to get the police involved before someone actually gets hurt.
By the way, these days it is very difficult to force someone to commit (detain). Previously, it was possible to detain someone if, for example, he began to shout and threaten to kill people (with real weapons or otherwise). Makes sense, right? Someone who is out of their mind and is a danger to themselves or others should be in a safe place until they have a chance to calm down, sober up and / or take the right medication. Now the client has to be covered in his own feces, running around in traffic jams, yelling and threatening to kill people (already with a weapon in hand) so that they can even be judged for detention. This is because mental hospitals were recently declared “illegal” in Washington state and no funds have been allocated for any alternatives. Google it, call your legislature.
Sometimes we also manage to have fun with clients, for example, drive them in a group to the park or something like that. This is also always nice.
How much money can you expect at your job? Or what is the average starting salary?
You can expect to start at $ 14 an hour and then work your way up gradually, gaining about $ 0.75 a year or so until you settle at around $ 26 an hour. I’ve been doing this for a while, so I’m doing somewhere in the middle.
How are you “progressing” in your field?
You usually need to complete a master’s degree in order to be eligible to advance directly in the field of mental health. Technically, all undergraduate tutors work under the supervision of one or more Mental Health Professionals (MHP). The process for becoming an MHP is similar to becoming an affiliated agency consultant, except that you need a master’s degree or your agency must complete some paperwork to make you a special exemption for you. These exceptions are extremely rare; they usually happen because a responsible MHP plan was suddenly fired / fired and the agency needs someone to act immediately.
What do people underestimate / overestimate in what you do?
As I mentioned earlier, most people don’t understand how much work is being done, so to speak, behind the scenes. For example, it can sometimes be difficult to send a client to a nursing facility. From the outside, this process may look like this:
- State that the client must be in a nursing home.
- Time is passing.
- The client ends up in a nursing home.
Sometimes people don’t realize that Step 2 actually requires a lot of work; phone calls, endless visits to doctors and additional assistance to the client so that he does not die while waiting for materialized service of the required level.
On the other hand, I have many people who overestimate the level of patience required to get this job done. It is not difficult for me to be patient with people with mental illness; I am aware of the limitations of their symptoms and adjust accordingly. It doesn’t hurt that I get paid to be patient too.
What advice would you give to those who want to become your profession?
Read this interview in its entirety and ask yourself: can I get the job done? Seriously, this is the advice I would give. Also, take care of yourself. This kind of work can tire you emotionally. It’s important to take time for yourself (find a hobby!) And leave work at work. In time, everything will be done. I could work 16 hours a day, seven days a week and still not keep up with everything. It is important to know how to prioritize.
Knowledge is power – literally in this area. Know your customers; Knowing which customer might go shopping on their own if you have to drop everything in an emergency, knowing what their basic behavior is so you can distinguish a customer’s illness in recession from a customer just having a bad day. Know your teammates; know their charts so you can rely on them when you need them and so they can lean on you know your skillsets so you can trade clients if one just doesn’t work for you. Finally, get to know your agency. Follow the rules and use common sense. If you have any doubts about what to do in a situation, let your supervisor know. Call your boss and get his opinion on the situation, discuss it and find the best solution for everyone.
This interview has been edited for clarity.