• @kittenbridgeasteroid@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    -1
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Mental health issues caused them to be homeless. People with severe Bipolar, borderline, or schizoeffective disorders can’t function in society without being heavily medicated, and a choice was made to not take that medication (I don’t blame them. Anitsychotics have super shitty side effects).

    Sure, homelessness might make it worse, but their illness is what led to the homelessness.

    • @Rowsdower@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      62 years ago

      Source? If that was true why don’t places with higher rates of mental illness or less access to mental healthcare have higher rates of homelessness?

        • @Rowsdower@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          92 years ago

          The first two sources I find suggest the following

          The idea that mental illness alone causes homelessness is naive and inaccurate, for two major reasons. First, the overwhelming majority of those living with mental illness are not homeless (and studies have failed to demonstrate a causal relationship between the two).

          The ultimate causes of homelessness are upstream, i.e. a profound lack of affordable housing due in large part to neo-liberal government austerity policies that prevent or limit public funding for housing, gentrification that displaces working and poor families, and growing income disparities that make paying the rent beyond the means of millions of households.