Independent Housing for Individuals with Mental Illness

By

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 21

Independent housing1

Factors influencing independent living of the mentally ill3

Community-based alternatives for independent housing4

Dealing with difficult-to-place people6

Environment6

Psychiatric hospitals7

Board-and-care homes7

Group homes8

Supported Independent housing9

Independent living arrangements9

Obstacles to Community Integration10

Non-compliance with psychiatric medication11

Ambivalence about autonomy12

Insufficient Supports in Community13

Inadequate Living Conditions14

Community Resistance15

Mental Illness as Leprosy17

Summary18

REFERENCES22

CHAPTER 2

The literature review has examined different materials that have focused on how mental health patients can be integrated with the community through independent living. The literature review has been drawn from various materials including journal articles that are peer-reviewed, books, magazines and other articles that were found relevant to the topic. The review has explored various community based integration approaches that have been used in housing placement of the mentally disabled people across different parts particularly in the U.S, and has found that different scholars agree on the need for independent housing. The literature review has been deemed important in providing direction to the research and identifying areas where this study agrees or disagrees with the previously done research studies on the subject as well as other scholars' views and thoughts. The study involved reviewing works of research done earlier by other researchers on the issue of integration of mentally ill and disabled people in the community, and also carried out consultation with health organizations and housing researchers. The study by Caplan (2007, p. 79)

Independent housing

In recent years, mental health systems have become more focused on helping the individuals with mental illness lead meaningful lives in the community. Provision of the appropriate community-based independent housing was always considered a key component of community integration, as residential settings are known to have a direct influence on emotional well-being. However, understanding the experiences of consumers in different residential settings and the effectiveness of such settings in terms of community integration are "extremely limited". There are various strategies that could be used in empowerment of people with mental disabilities and in achieving community integration of these people (Talukdar et al, 2008, p. 613). (Terence et al, 2012) explored the emerging practices and approaches to better housing of mentally disabled people. Nelson mentioned that housing placement for those with mental disabilities improves their conditions and their medical bills as well are reduced. The idea was supported by Nelson of shifting to homes as opposed to institutionalized settings to allow the mentally ill to have social and physical integration with the rest of the community. Pearson et al (2007) reinforced the idea arguing that programs such as housing first have shown that proper housing placement reduces psychiatric symptoms to those put under such programs. (Torrey, 2010) found that the plan had reduced the people's overall cost of living including emergency costs besides improving their health status.

Moore (2006) carried out a literature review on institutional care for the mentally sick. Tatiana examined the preferences of the mentally ill people in regard to housing placements and situations and found that consumers of the institutionalized support services demonstrated the desire to have independent housing where they can live alone or ...