Anyone else work in mental health?

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I know I'm not the only one. C'mon, where are you guys? I'm an Intensive Case Manager with a major healthcare system in the northeastern US for children and adolescents on the Spectrum, including many with Asperger's, and while there are plenty of NTs who do a similar job, I'm an ASD Specialist (unlike many of my generalist colleagues) and I'm generally recognized as one of the best in my field.

Where are the rest of you folks with AS working in mental/behavioral health hanging out?

Yes and no. I'm a nurse and have worked on med-surg floors and an AIDS unit, several nursing homes, and a large long-term care facility called Bird S. Coler on Roosevelt Island in NYC. I've been exposed to patients with mental health issues, even worked on a psych floor for a short well in Bellevue Hospital, so I'm always around those who run the gamut of behaviours. I've spent two months straight in a locked psych unit, but I wasn't just visiting.

Oh yeah. I've been on "the other side" of that equation too. In fact I was a victim of health insurance fraud psychological abuse when I spent two weeks in a locked-down inpatient unit a couple of years ago.

I've also been trained to write 302s and to help other with writing 302s (in the US this is a legal term for involuntary mental examination, which may or may not result in involuntary hospitalization). I think I was probably the only person in that training who had ever been 302'ed himself

I'm a behavior analyst by title, but by job function may not be what most think of for a BA. "Case manager" might be more accurate as to my job description, but semantics whatever. I have a state job in the midwest at an adult DD facility--a small handful of residents are diagnosed autistic, but DD is the focus of the facility generally.

I'm not "recognized" as anything, yet. And I maybe won't ever be. Honestly, I feel like in the medium-term the best thing I can do is to influence some cohesiveness and cooperation within the organization--maybe I'm wrong, but being the only behavior analyst over like 270 residents it's pretty hard to evoke any kind of face-to-face change on any level. We'll see how it goes.

I work with people who are mental health providers but I'm not one myself.

^ What do you do? Curious.

^ Ah, makes sense. You work for a hospital/healthcare network/service provider?

Before my daugher was born, I worked in mental health services, but in the admin/IT side. I dealt with the paperwork and statistics. One of my jobs was to allocate reports to mental health officers (a specific type of social worker). Whenever someone was detained in a psychiatric hospital, under legislation, a report had to be written by one of these officers and I was in charge of the rota. I also arranged and minuted meetings regarding service users who had court orders in relation to their care and/or finances (called 'Adults with Incapacity'). The service users in this case were often people with Korsakoff's. Those meetings could be quite interesting and heated, on occasions, as the service users were regularly in attendance. The other service users tended to be people with other types of dementia.

A worked at a state hospital for the mentally insane. The psychiatric technicians bullied me a lot.

I work as a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist (been doing it for 3 years now) and was diagnosed 6 months ago after my supervisor recognised it and 'nudged me' in the right direction. The 'right direction' was an experienced psychologist who works in the same building but a different department. Before this I worked for many years as a senior care officer in a secure unit for young rapists, robbers and general scumbags.

There's quite a lot more I could say about this and might start a new thread, but I made the mistake of telling my colleagues (all females and therapists) nievely assuming that they would be more forgiving of my eccentricities if they new of the diagnosis. Most of them have been ok but right now I'm catching hell off my managers, (what appears to me to be bordering on harrasment / discrimination) who seem to be sh*****g themselves that one of us slipped through the interview net and is now 'working on the inside'.

My admin work and adherence to what I see as petit rules and regulations has always been s**t as I'm not interested in ticking pointless boxes and doing risk assessments before I move a chair etc etc. But until I got the diagnosis there were no concerns over my clinical practice. Now all of a sudden they are examining everything I do and say (around the office / chit chat, in supervision, with patients etc etc and pulling me up for things they stereotypically associate with aspergers. Its a long story and I will tell every single detail of it when I get round to it!