What's the point of having a case manager?

[Guest6547]

Hello this is my first post. So I've somehwat recently been put on a treatment order and I've been given case managers. The first one was from England and was constantly seeing a dentist so she was never there till her visa ran out which she forgot about so she was shipped off to England again. The second one I saw once and she was going to look for groups but then I ended up in the mental hospital again and I never saw her till an appointment outside of it and one meeting then she was gone the third one was a piece of work, he was arrogant and kept going on about my autism which was dealt with already in childhood which was not why I was there now granted I had not yet opened up about why I was angry so he was assuming it was autism but still I was not there for that then when I said that to him he said I was there because there's something wrong with me and the whole meeting that meeting was hard to get through before the meeting I tried to get rid of him and he said that all case managers do the same things and he knows "I tried to get rid of him" and told me "not to do it again" well he asked to many questions and was being like that so I thought I'll show you and got rid of him now this next one is never there been gone for a month and five weeks and I saw her one time throughout those months because she was on holiday then sick with whatever. But every case manager asks all the questions how's your sleep, diet, mood what have you been doing and they all have their own personal questions they like to ask me but beyond asking these imo invasive since I'm a private person I like my life to be mine not theirs questions what do they do? I know their original purpose was to prevent us from.landing back in hospital but how? Thanks for any answers.

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi Guest6547,

Thank you for your question - and gee what a mess of your experiences so far with case managers. Unfortunately there's not a lot of regulations in place with case managers (like there is with counsellors and psychologists) so it can be a bit of a hit and miss and inconsistent.

That's not a very helpful answer so I encourage you to ask them - whats your role? How are you going to help me? Why are you asking me these things? Given that they are there to help (ideally!) they should be really transparent about how their role works and the things they do/don't do.

Generally though - case managers roles are to oversee. So depending on what you're going through, maybe you're seeing a psychologist, GP, support worker, social worker, psychiatrist, hospital staff; it can be a lot, and it can be confusing and overwhelming. So the case manager helps to make sure that everyone works together and has the same goals for you. They can also do a lot of referrals, so if you are only seeing a case manager for example and you share that your mood is low, they might look into you seeing a therapist, or if you say that you're not eating or struggling with weight gain/weight loss, they might look into you seeing a dietician.

I hope that this makes sense and clarifies things a bit.

rt