HOMELESSNESS AND MENTAL ILLNESS

Homelessness and Mental Illness

Homelessness and Mental Illness

Introduction

The complex interrelationship between mental illness and homelessness has long been noted by service delivery agencies, public health workers and social justice bodies. Following changes in mental health service delivery in the latter part of last century, the observation was swiftly made that the homeless reflected higher rates of mental illness than the rest of the population. Documented rates of the prevalence of mental illness in homeless people range from 2 to 90%. Down and Out in Sydney (Hodder, Teeson & Burich, 1998) found that 75% of participants in the study of the Sydney inner-city homeless population had at least one mental illness compared to 20% in the general population. Indeed, in 1978, American researchers noted that people with mental illness had come to personify homelessness, referring to New York's Bowery as a “psychiatric dumping ground” (Reich and Siegel, 1978). As psychiatric diagnosis became more discriminating, the diversity and origins of disorder became clearer (Drake et al, 1996) and the links between homelessness and illness discerned. Causal chains are many and varied. There is a well-established link between poverty and poor mental health (Shaw et al, 1999, p216); poverty may impact housing, education, employment, social support, family cohesion, and access to health services.

Prevalence

According to the matter misuse and Mental wellbeing Services Administration, 20 to 25% of the homeless community in the United States bears from some form of critical mental illness. In evaluation, only 6% of Americans are harshly brain ill (National Institute of Mental wellbeing, 2009). In a 2008 review performed by the U.S. seminar of heads, 25 cities were asked for the three biggest determinants of homelessness in their communities. Mental sickness was the third biggest origin of homelessness for single mature persons (mentioned by 48% of cities). For homeless families, mental sickness was cited by 12% of towns as one of the peak 3 determinants of homelessness.

Homelessness

any person who inhabits below what is the agreeable smallest standard of lodgings could be classified as “homeless”. This is an important point because it hints at the concept of relative deprivation - the degree of disadvantage of an individual, family or group relative to the society they live in (Shaw et al, 1999, p214). Relative deprivation suggests that there is no objective point of absolute disadvantage rather that disadvantage starts with even subtle inequality, and continuing on to its extremes. While an operational definition of homelessness is a key to developing targeted policy, specificity may limit its scope to address only the extreme end of the spectrum. Many opportunities for intervention may occur in preceding, less extreme stages. The three-tiered definition of homelessness described by Chamberlain and MacKenzie (cited in Chamberlain, 1999) is appropriate.

Primary homelessness

People without conventional accommodation, such as people living on the streets, sleeping in parks, squatting in derelict buildings, or using cars or railway carriages for temporary shelter, are the victims of primary homeliness.

Secondary homelessness

People, who move frequently from one form of temporary shelter to another, ...