Rehab Success Rate???

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Hi all:

Does anybody have any numbers of the success rate of the substance abuse industry? I simply have no idea and Mr. Google hasn't been that helpful. Thank You all!!!

Also, my friend that has bipolar disorder, the last job she had was working at a food packaging factory for minimum wage- she has two college degrees... that's the best she could get and obviously that's not enough to support herself and her two kids. With her wage at the food factory all she could afford was to rent a room for the three of them to share in a half way house... so, not everyone gets a second chance and considering her mental illness was something completely outside of her control it seems kinda ridiculous that she would even be put in a position where she's having to ask for another chance. If she had gone into any other field she would have had support and help from her employer and her board would have been empathetic not callous. Although, it wasn't just the nursing board or the nursing profession that discarded her and hung her out to dry or did her a disservice- it was also the police who arrested her and took her to jail instead of a hospital. Everyone knows the criminal justice system deals with mental illness horribly but, still her biggest source of pain comes from the nursing board and the nursing field- she still hasn't gotten over it. I mean, how do you get over something like that?

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My god I don't know what to say. I'll pray for your friend. We are a miserable lot to turn our back on a fellow stricken nurse like this. It's sickening. I'm at a complete loss. Rabid dogs treat each other better

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Might as well say- she's actually my girlfriend. She went crazy, I didn't know how to handle it- was trying to get her to go to the hospital, she wouldn't. I was afraid she was going to hurt herself or me or the kids. So, I called the police and asked them to take her to the hospital, she fought them and they threw her in jail and cause the kids weren't mine they took them to foster care. When she got out with everything she was going through with the board and losing the kids and then she blamed me for calling the cops- saying it was my fault that she lost the kids. I was just trying to get her help. She disappeared, was living in her car. I couldn't find her and fell into a severe depression, I was fully suicidal. Losing her and the kids was the most painful thing I had ever gone through. That's when my drinking got out of control but, honestly I was prepared to end my life- and I'm not being dramatic, I really was. I drank so much the day before work, I honestly didn't realize I was intoxicated but I was living in a haze. That's when I lost my job because I showed up to work intoxicated, I really didn't feel drunk but, honestly, I didn't care. I figured I'd live off my retirement and kill myself when I ran out. She contacted me out of nowhere about a year after she'd disappeared, we've been together since and I decided then that of course I want to be sober and alive and take care of her and the kids, who I love and as my own, but... I screwed up, now I'm really scared if I don't get a job as a nurse again I don't know how I'll be able to support four people and I actually care again, I miss working. I want to be a nurse, I really don't know what I'm gonna do if I can't find work. She's not working right now cause her mom had a stroke and she was helping her recover- so, she's living with her parents in a different state but, her mom is doing really well now so as soon as I start working I can get us a place. I'm really worried I won't be able to do that. All of this started a little over two years ago now and I know, I know she has PTSD from what she went through with losing her career. It's just awful for her and her kids; she worked so hard as a single mom to get through school and in the end it was all just to be publicly shamed and humiliated.

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To clarify the post above, it didn't happen in a day, like she went crazy and I called the police and she lost her job. It was more like two months after she lost her job and had her meeting with the board before I called the police and asked them to take her to the hospital because she just kept getting worse and worse to the point where she was just completely out of touch with reality. She just kept getting worse and I know that the stress of the nursing board and losing her job compounded it- she was so stressed out, she couldn't get better. Fast forward to two years later and all any potential employer has to do is a google search and that's it, they know everything about her psychotic manic episode and what happened with her nursing license- so, she can't just say something like she wanted a career change or had a small personal problem even because, just a google search says it all. It actually says it worse than it was saying she practiced while impaired when she didn't. Basically, life long embarrassment and public humiliation.

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Specializes in OR.
You can't extrapolate nurses' recovery rates from those of the general population."

Then please don't extrapolate the "few nurses you knew that you worked with" that may have had a positive experience from this however when" to assume that's how it is with the rest of us. J

......There was a lot more in this post in response to the person I quoted above but I reconsidered as I think i would really be getting no where. But i'll leave this last paragraph here...

Bitter and negative? **** right. No i will not "let it go." I have a diagnosed illness and for that I have paid with my career, my family relationships and every bloody cent I have and then some along with my dignity and my ability to trust just about anyone. As if handling the effects of my health both mental and physical are not hard enough I have been taken advantage of by the very people that I reached out to for help. Concentrate on being less negative? Try concentrate on not being quite so obtuse. And taking this as patronizing? Yes, i do take it is such. Very.

And to everyone else, I'm sorry if i sound ****** this morning....I just am.

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Honestly, when someone loses everything, friends, family, their livelihood, their dignity because of something they had no control over- I don't know how they wouldn't be bitter and negative. The stigma associated with mental illness is very real and they way it's handled by the nursing board and nursing field is disgusting. You sound just like someone I know and I definitely get it. I guess the difference with being an addict and doing things like diverting and showing up to work drunk is that as much as addiction is a disease acting on your impulses like that is also a choice. Clearly, addicts have to chose to keep poisoning themselves and sabotaging their own life but, with the episodes of temporary psychosis, mania, severe depression (r/t bipolar disorder) that frequently occurs with people afflicted with bipolar disorder when it's severe, it's like you're a victim of your brain. It shouldn't be treated the same as addiction in nursing, it's really disgraceful. No matter how many freaking AA meetings you go to or pee tests you take- that's not going to change that you have a mental illness. It also doesn't change that people who are mentally ill hurt others at rates lower than the general population. When someone who is mentally ill falls into an episode like that it's easy to spot and the person can be kindly direct or driven to a hospital by their employer, family can be called or a police for an ambulance (although with people who are mentally ill that can definite backfire or we wouldn't hear about people being fatally shot and those types of horror stories). There's so many ways the board and the field can handle it that aren't cruel and further destructive. Nurses who have an episode of severe mental illness, their cases should be handled privately, if there's board monitoring it can be as simple as the board having you sign a contract to see a therapist and stipulate that you take medication and call in once a month so they can make sure you're stable, it shouldn't be public probation forcing you to meet stips that make no sense and you definitely shouldn't be forced to disclose that to potential employers because discrimination is real and difficult to prove. People with bipolar disorder can suffer one severe episode and not another for ten, fifteen years or more. Point is, it can definitely be managed and when the person is stable again there's no reason why they can't safely return to work, it's not like their episode resulted in them losing their years of experience, skill or knowledge. It really is awful to lose friends and family and spend the rest of your life treated with kid gloves by people in your life who once respected you- but, to be shamed infront of your professional community is just further wounding someone who is struggling, causing trauma to a person who is already vulnerable. You'd think people in the nursing field who are supposed to be compassionate, caring and not judgemental would be there for you but they turn their backs to gossip. You'd think surely any employer and professional board would want to see you stable, okay again and would be compassionate but, they're anything but. It's really tragic. What happened with my girlfriend was extreme and if what happened with you is the better response- that shows how sick the board and nursing field are. You'd think people in the medical field with their education would know that many people who suffer from a severe mental illness can be well stabilized on medication and with treatment. God, to have your story published online, how is that not a HIPPA violation? It's completely sick and sad and will always be a tragedy in your life- living with a mental illness, like I said, is torture in and of itself but, it seems like for many the worst part about it is society's response. Like I said, I have friends who are speech pathologists and school psychologist (one of each) who have suffered psychotic episodes, more than once, and are always allowed to return to the same job they've had for over twenty years (one at an elementary school- actually the lead school psychologist in her district) the other in a program that works with autistic children. Their boards keep their illness private as they should and their employers are compassionate as they should be. There's no reason not to be bitter and negative- it's like kicking someone when they're down, then dragging them down the road as they keep trying to get better. It's sad, it really is. It's hard enough to come to terms with your diagnosis without losing your integrity at the hands of your profession. The way the board handles the cases of people who suffer from a severe mental illness is really screwed up, that's the bottom line; it makes no logical sense. That board investigator basically admitted that probation is intended to be punishing- why the hell would anyone want to punish someone for being ligetimately sick? How is that okay?

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Specializes in OR.

The thing is there is a lot about substance use and mental illness that go hand in hand. Many times people that use are doing so to quiet the pain in their heads. These programs unfortunately refuse to see that if the mental illness were under control the substance use would either never have happened or would be highly highly unlikely to happen again. My observation is that they go off of the immediate premise that everyone who abuses any kind of substance does so for the "high" and it is some kind of a moral failing that must be punished....ie: the 12 step model. While that may be the case for some, it still does not justify the destruction of a lifetime of work. At the risk of making a generalization here, I don't think the "approved" evaluators or treatment facilities that are favored by these programs have any idea what to do with the behavioral/mental health side of all of this. It is merely called "dual diagnosis" and promptly ignored.

These "treatment facilities" (I am using the term loosely and again making generalizations based on my own experiences) have minimal to no psychiatric staff and are overpriced glorified babysitting services. Were this any kind of real "treatment" one would think that the 40 something y/o adult client that cried nonstop, all day every day about anything might have something going on besides a "substance use disorder" that never had any real evidence beyond some quacks ethically questionably opinion. (But did have a documented BP dx.)

At least where rehabs are concerned mental health is not as $$$ lucrative and more time consuming to treat. Our own treat us the same. Some days when I think about all of this, I wish I had done something else for a living.

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And the DUI thing, seriously? What the hell does that have to do with your job? Why can't people be alcoholics outside of work anyway, as long as they don't go to work drunk, or drink at work? Last time I checked alcohol is legal and being an alcoholic... it's also completely legal. Why the hell should someone who got a DUI not be allowed narc keys or to work home health? It literally makes no freakin sense. I mean, I get that you have to report a DUI to your employer, pretty sure that's true with most jobs- that if you get arrested you have to report it to your employer? If that's not true then I don't get why that should be the case for nurses only. It just makes no sense. In my case, I get it- why the punishment- I get it... But, for me the worst part about all of it is that it's all published for public access- I'm not quite sure why that's necessary. Diverting or being impaired at work- clearly, in those cases probation makes sense and having the details of your actions reported to whatever government agencies and accessible to potential employers, that makes sense. But, I'm not sure why that information is easily accessible to everyone in the world and mail delivered to all the nurses in your state. If addiction is protected by the ADA now, why do all our peers need to be informed of our personal struggles? I don't get that. And... I was fortunate enough to have money in savings which allowed me to pay the 70k for rehab and IOP- but, for the nurses without the money to pay you'd think they'd offer some type of alternative or at least give them time to work another job, get health insurance and be able to go to rehab- I mean, I don't know- something! To just say you either have the money or you lose everything? I don't see how anyone can't see that that's maybe even just a tiny bit messed up.

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Cats- thanks for that. I just have so much guilt associated with what I did and when I compare it to you or my girlfriend, it makes me feel like a total a-hole. Or when I compare it to people like Spanks who did something outside work...Still coming to grips with my shame here. But, yeah, clearly when I was drinking to that point and was battling suicidal thoughts- I was obviously self medicating the severe depression I fell into. I guess the difference is that for me it was situational- had a lot of guilt about my girlfriends kids going to foster care, really was just full of self hate at that point in my life and was lonely and hopeless. I felt like I'd contributed to the destruction of a family made up of three really vulnerable people and I couldn't deal with that, it was too much for me. But, honestly, now that I'm dealing with this and facing the very real possibility that I'm not going to be able to get my life together again I'm feeling pretty damn depressed again, fortunately not depressed enough to want to drink, especially because I know it'd be the nail in my coffin as far as nursing goes. And I agree with everything you're sayin about the rehab industry but seriously- showing up to work drunk- that's pretty bad. The fact I worked at a psych hospital makes it somewhat better, especially one as mellow as the one I worked at although it's almost more embarrassing. Anyway, you're right, they are closely related- mentally stable people don't try to poison themselves with drugs and alcohol on a daily basis.

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I often wish I'd done something else for a living since all this happened, even with as much as I loved being a nurse. But, yeah, I definitely wasn't chasing a high so much as trying to secure my death. And I don't want to sound like a high school kid that wanted to die after a break-up, I'm in my late forties (she's more than a decade younger) so, it wasn't that. It was that I couldn't deal with the guilt I had and fear that my girlfriend could very well be dead on the streets and the kids forever wards of the state because I made the wrong choice although, I really didn't know what the hell to do in the situation, she needed to go to the hospital. It didn't go as planned but, thinking I caused irreparable harm to vulnerable people who trusted me... maybe I'm weak but, I just couldn't handle it. People at the point I was at, with my level of suicidality, they don't seek help cause they want to die. But, still, going to a nursing job drunk is pretty bad.

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Specializes in OR.

Don't feel guilty. The first thing that occurred to you was safety for her and for the kids. That's what a human being does. The idiocy of society and sadly our own colleagues is not your fault.

I don't have it in me to be crusader rabbit and go out and change the world and I'm afraid that the situations we've been discussing are way bigger than all of us. Depending on the day of the week and the direction of the wind I debate with myself about what I will do when this is all over. I do have the luxury of good family support although that has not been an easy thing for me to make peace with. Today, I would like to go back to nursing preferably in my previous specialty. Tomorrow, who knows.

If I may make a few suggestions for your girlfriend, if she has not already done so, apply for SSDI. You referred in one of your previous posts about her having dealt with homelessness throughout all of this at a point. There are some initiatives that help folks like her and I streamline the application process to hopefully get an approval quicker. PM me and i'll Get you more info.

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