Job search depression

How are you going @Ruby26 ?

What have you been up to recentl? Sorry it's taken some time to get back to you.

@tyme thanks for the check in. Sorry its taken me so long to get back to you too.

Work was really busy for a few weeks, including a huge project that recently finished up. I've been quite down for the last week and a half.

How are things going for you?

Sorry you have felt down recently @Ruby26

I really appreciated you choosing to respond to my experience in the so called Masters in Diversity and Inclusion. Reading this thread, I can see you and others have had your own poor experiences in the field. I had an earlier experience at another university doing Counselling, where I was prevented from going into the postgrad course, which I had well and truly enough quals for, and I submitted to that course co-ordinator, who was not aware of her judgmental biases, and did yet another Cert 4. Now, I have also socialised with a lot of academics and health professionals, and I am so unimpressed with many of them. So now, I am more passionate about peer support rather than even buying into the clinical and academic models.

My story is quite extreme, so takes a while for people to get the real situation.

@Blackcloud

@Appleblossom yeah exactly, that’s also why I’ve also been wanting to lean more into doing peer support as well.

In my experience so far, even course coordinators and other relevant staff members of the cert 4 in mental health peer work can be like that too - like I have this issue or barrier where when it comes to verbal communications I struggle to form proper sentences when I’m talking to someone on the spot without me constantly needing to actually take the time to fully process the words that I need to say & everytime, I have to keep making multiple pauses and stuff. I asked one of the placement coordinators of another institution at the time if it’s possible that I can talk to clients through chat-based communication for placements, to which that request got denied. But this was a year ago.

Now I’m about to start off doing that cert IV course next week & I’ve already found a placement that’s more suited and accommodated to my needs (because the organisation I’ll be doing placements at is the same organisation I currently volunteer as one of the facilitator roles with & that organisation is solely focused on neurodivergence)

@Blackcloud Hhmmm. Difficulty in Speaking is not that unusual an issue, so sorry your course would not accomodate it. (Weirdly I was just speaking about my difficulties with it on another thread on Sane forum lol) But it is good you do have placements and positions in a course now. It sounds like a really valuable and interesting and skill building role.

I may go back to study one day, but not in a hurry to settle for low grade circumstances. I have always submitted, and I dont need to do that whilst also paying HECS etc. Working on finding my tribe atm.

@Ruby26 @FearofUnknown @tyme

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@Ruby26 wrote:

@tyme thanks for the check in. Sorry its taken me so long to get back to you too.

Work was really busy for a few weeks, including a huge project that recently finished up. I've been quite down for the last week and a half.

How are things going for you?

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Sorry to hear you have been quite down @Ruby26 . Is it due to changes you are aware of? Is the project part of the voluntary work? I've just finished a voluntary project recently too.

@Appleblossom thank you, I'm glad to hear my response was helpful. I was also prevented from studying a postgrad counselling course- even after they already told me I had a place in the program. I was given a place in a Master of Social Work but then they refused to let me undertake the compulsory placement. A lot of these courses just make assumptions with any disclosure of disability.

Peer support sounds like a good decision. I worked in peer support for years. The only thing is that many of the paid peer support positions are very focused on having peer workers who relate well with the clinicians rather than about the peer to peer work itself. Be careful about any peer job that involves working in a clinical service.

@Blackcloud I'm glad to hear you found a placement that works for you. I had a lot of trouble finding placement for the Cert IV, I had to combine work from a whole bunch of different places because no one would give me the full 120 hours' worth of work (I only just got the hours done a few days before the deadline).

I also struggle a lot with verbal communication. What you've described sounds very much like my experiences with auditory processing issues. Sometimes, if you can get a psychiatrist or a GP to write a letter explaining auditory processing issues, that can help with reasonable adjustments. It legally needs to be treated the same as if someone with a hearing impairment was studying the course.

@Ruby26 @Blackcloud @tyme @FearofUnknown

I am old enough for age pension soon, so not too worried about paid roles, and glad I dont have to compromise myself. Yes, I am aware of those issues in clinical field regarding peer work being used as window dressing... am meeting more peer workers..on and off line ... and hearing their point of view.

Also met a badly behavied psychiatrist, whose naked attention seeking, grandiosity and lack of insight is not a testament to that pro and con .... pro and con ... maybe a bit of conjob ...profession .... cough cough.

It does help to have permission to speak freely.

@tyme thank you. I ended up relapsing with depression. I don't think it's been caused by specific recent changes but more of an issue that's been going on long term.

This project was paid work. It was only short term but it was a topic that is important to me and having some money come in has been great too.

How have things been going for you? How did things go with your voluntary project?