I know those of us who work in the field probably have one (or more!) of these on our caseload.
Right now, I have a person like this----she is a woman who was bipolar PRIOR to her head injury.
She has been unmedicated by choice for several years now which makes it difficult to help her.
She also has severe, severe short-term memory from her head injury and has a great deal of difficulty with organization. She is constantly losing everything from her important papers to her car. (Scary that she drives too, but that's another post!).
She most of the time prioritizes other stuff in her life over her services, and then everything ends up turning into a crisis for her (and she attempts to make everything a crisis for those of us who are attempting to help her!).
She goes around calling everyone she can think of to complain that no one is assisting her-----------but she is not sticking to her treatment plan either. She can't (or won't!) see her role she plays in this issue.
She continues to overspend. And then does not have money for basic needs. She schedules her medical appointments out of town, but has no way to get to them...........and then gets upset with her providers because they are not able to take her.
She is a disaster waiting to happen which is really sad for me to say.............but a lot of these situations are just that. Often as helping professionals our hands are tied with clients like this until something really bad happens. The warning signs are all there. We can offer some assistance. But unless a person WANTS to be helped, and is willing to FOLLOW their treatment plan, there's not much we can do. This is probably one of the most frustrating things about my job.
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