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Background:

This is inspired by this question of mine on Academia Stack Exchange, where I ask how best I could prepare for teaching responsibilities in a research academic role in spite of my main symptom of schizophrenia: avolition.

Avolition is where everyday things require enormous amounts of motivation; sometimes, people with this symptom can barely get out of bed.

There is significant stigma around schizophrenia too.

The responses I got to that question weren't very encouraging, albeit they were realistic.

For instance, I mentioned I attended about a third of my tutorials (consisting of about 20 people and that I get paid to teach) in the spring term of last year. This seemed to suggest to people that an academic career is not for me.

I see it as a temporary situation.

However, it does raise something in my mind . . .

The Question:

What reasonable accommodations could someone with schizophrenia ask for when applying for a job?

Clarification:

Schizophrenia has different effects on different people, who respond in different ways to many different medications. That said, the "positive" symptoms (i.e., those that are added to the personality, like hearing voices, believing things despite strong evidence to the contrary, paranoia, etc.) are, more often than not, put under control if the patients takes their medication as prescribed; the "negative" symptoms are those that are subtracted from the personality, such as avolition, a lack of interest in personal hygiene, asociality, and so on, and these, together with "cognitive" symptoms (e.g., disorganised speech, memory issues, poor concentration), are very difficult to treat.

For me, it has been 35 weeks since I heard a voice. The only debilitating symptom I have (I am aware of: anosognosia is a thing) is the avolition. The avolition is worse than the voices ever were.

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    VTC: I sympathize with your plight and applaud your efforts. The issue is - what is reasonable in one field of work would be highly unreasonable in another. For example, I work in IT and work full time remote. Asking me to attend a remote meeting that is outside my normal hours is not as onerous as asking me to come into the office (4+ hour drive away) - whereas for high-level sales, flying to a big potential client 10 hours away is reasonable. There are also local regulation, company regulations to consider.
    – TheDemonLord
    Commented Nov 13 at 0:37
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    To add to the above - lets say you wanted specific accomodations to work in retail - that we might be able to help with, but if the retail was say a Hunting Store, where you would have access to Firearms, that would have a significant impact on what was and was not reasonable.
    – TheDemonLord
    Commented Nov 13 at 0:40
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    @TheDemonLord I disagree with VTC. While specific industries may have additional constraints; asking about baseline values under national law is on topic. Outside of academia, a math degree is effectively an opportunity to sell yourself to a broad variety of knowledge worker positions. Given the apparent severity of OPs disability I suspect their plan B of working in industry is scoped to almost anything where they can get hired.
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Commented Nov 13 at 3:35
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    This honestly feels more like a medical one, than a workplace one. You should discuss this with some medical professionals first. Most accommodations are determined by doctors/therapists and the only thing the workplace has to do is to implement them (If reasonably possible).
    – Hilmar
    Commented Nov 13 at 3:39
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    I can relate to the avolition. Missing two thirds of your teaching assignments suggests that you are not in a place to be in a regular job. Working with a medical advisor to find a way to be able to work more days might need to be the top priority.
    – David R
    Commented Nov 13 at 15:02

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Unfortunately - while I don't know what the UK would consider the limit of a reasonable accommodation - if you're only functional randomly for 1 day in 3; I fear that is probably beyond what most businesses would be able to accommodate.

The problem is that your availability would be so sporadic and unpredictable that an employer would only be able to task you with things that could be completed in a single working day or that have no near term deadlines attached because of the risk that you won't be able to finish on time.

Unless your situation improves I suspect you'd be limited to small piece work type jobs that either pay hourly or per task completed. You probably need to work with a disability assistance organization to find one instead of searching on the broader job market.

If you haven't done so, you should talk to your doctor about your avolition problems. Someone I knew well had a different mental problem that was also treated with anti-psychotic medications. It took a number of attempts for her doctors to find a drug that could effectively treat her symptoms without causing her to barely go through the motions of functioning at school and home.

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