Mentally Homeless

October 17, 2007, 10:00 am; posted by
Filed under Articles, Chloe, Featured  | 11 Comments

Imagine your doctor telling you that you are seriously ill. He books you into hospital for an operation. You go in, are shown to your bed and are asked what you want for supper.

The next day you sit by your bed, now familiar with the hospital and its regime. You wait patiently.

The next day is followed by another. Nothing happens. The days turn into weeks; and then months.

And one day a nurse says: ‘Tomorrow you are going home.’ ‘But I thought I was seriously ill,’ you say in surprise. ‘Oh, you are,’ she replies, ‘but our budget doesn’t extend to curing you. This is all we can afford.’

— John Bird, The Mail on Sunday, February 2007

This is the image John Bird presents of the way the UK deals with homelessness. Essentially, government-funded programs provide soup kitchens, hostels, clothing and flats to homeless people depending on need, urgency, and of course, funds. It’s a social program designed to keep legitimately poor people off the street. It generally does a good job of weeding out those who are homeless due to drug or alcohol addiction, which is why between 87 and 90% of homeless people in London are there because of addiction.

John Bird is one of the founding members of the Big Issue, a magazine which provides homeless people with 10 free issues to sell on the streets, then allows them to buy more magazines as they sell. The Big Issue is a not-for-profit organization, designed to enable the homeless to make a living and gain both the skills and the resources to rehabilitate themselves.

One would think that, as a founder of an organization aimed at helping the homeless, Bird would be sympathetic to them. Instead, he writes, “The people who are homeless through addiction are feckless, unstable, unreliable, incapable of holding down a job, feeding themselves or cleaning themselves. You take them into a hostel, patch them up and put them in State housing on benefits and they continue to kill themselves… They are ill and should be ‘sectioned’ — lifted from the streets and confined in the care of the mental health system, behind bars if necessary.”

Bird argues that, while not all homelessness can be attributed to addiction, those that are addicts need to be institutionalized and ‘reprogrammed’ in order to live stable, healthy lives. In England, there are a few institutions that deal exclusively in rehabilitating the homeless. Bird reports a 60 to 70% success rate.

Is addiction a mental disorder? Is Bird right in saying the homeless should be committed? What about people who aren’t homeless, but still struggle with addiction? Or is it just the homeless who are mentally unstable? What do you think?


Comments

11 Comments to “Mentally Homeless”

  1. Steve on October 16th, 2007 9:52 pm

    I totally agree with him. Some in this country make the claim that we’re all just one paycheck, or a run of bad luck, away from homelessness. That’s simply nonsense. Those who live on the street generally do so because they are incapable of doing otherwise — not because of economic factors, but because of mental illness or addiction.

    Later in the article, he writes, “I’m not interested in giving people the benefit of the doubt. I’m interested in saving lives.” A refreshing attitude.

  2. Tom on October 17th, 2007 5:18 pm

    Not content with socialized medecine and television, this fellow wants to open up re-education camps? Listen up, UK. The obvious problem with socialism? You can’t have a welfare state without those who’ll be content to live on its scraps. This fellow wants to solve that problem by locking those people up and brainwashing them? A little too Orwellian for my delicate tastes, Madam Chairwoman. Where will they draw the line?

  3. David on October 17th, 2007 5:50 pm

    There is something to be said for taking chronically “homeless” people in and reprogramming them. If they could function in society like the rest of the “homed” they would be doing it now. But how do you keep this from being a vehicle for rounding up undesirables and making them dissappear? Is a guy homeless who lives off the land in the wilderness(a fantasy I still harbor)?

  4. Steve on October 17th, 2007 7:28 pm

    Tom, since when are mental hospitals ‘re-education camps’? Do you view rehab centers with the same suspicion? He’s not talking about your average nomad, your romantic hobo — he’s talking about the mentally ill and addicted. Leaving those people on the street is a long-term death sentence, and endangers everyone else as well.

  5. Chloe on October 18th, 2007 12:59 pm

    Steve – he isn’t talking about the mentally ill and addicted. He’s talking about the chronically homeless. As David said, there are those who, if they were able, would be living like the rest of us. However, for some people who fell on hard times and lived on the streets for a few years, there comes a time when they can’t do anything else. I know a guy who was homeless for several years, and now he’s a brilliant painter. He’s selling his work for anything between $200 and $3,000, and those are very reasonable prices. But he won’t take any of the money. He donates all of it to the homeless shelter that helped him. He doesn’t know what he would do with all that money. He doesn’t have mental issues or addictions, but he still struggles to stay off the streets, to keep normal living habits because he can’t shake the homeless mentality.

  6. Steve on October 18th, 2007 2:46 pm

    Chloe, he says right in that quote: “The people who are homeless through addiction.” I read the article. That’s precisely who he’s talking about. The chronically homeless are the mentally ill and addicted.

    Again he writes:
    “What nobody wants to acknowledge is that 90 per cent of people in and around homelessness have drink and drug problems. And 90 per cent of that figure are people who cannot control it.

    “It is addictive behaviour and the only way to tackle it and stand any chance of ‘curing’ the homeless is to treat it as the mental problem it is.”

    There are people living on the streets who aren’t like that. But they are a very small minority.

  7. Tom on October 18th, 2007 4:13 pm

    “What nobody wants to acknowledge is that 90 per cent of people in and around homelessness have drink and drug problems. And 90 per cent of that figure are people who cannot control it.”

    I’m so relieved you quoted this, so I don’t have to go out and read the whole thing to find something like this: his using the “90 per cent” figure twice says to me he hasn’t done any hard research, so he’s just some crackpot. Thanks for saving me a lot of time and outraged indignation!

  8. Steve on October 18th, 2007 4:31 pm

    Tom, you might want to read the whole thing to see that he has lived on the street himself and spent his whole life dealing with the people who live there. He may not have done the sort of white-coated survey you deem ‘hard research,’ but I defy you — who have none of his experience — to prove a contrary finding.

    You’re the one jumping to conclusions, not him.

  9. Djere on October 19th, 2007 11:31 am

    You know, Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime; Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

    I want a handout!

  10. David on October 19th, 2007 8:43 pm

    I had a homeless man approach me in the Dairy Queen while I was reading my Bible once and tell me he was down on his luck and needed $ 5.00 to get across town for a job interview, blah, blah, blah…so I gave him $5.00.

    Over the next 4 years he unsuccessfully accosted me a couple more times and then one day showed up as church was letting out and blocked the door intimidating all my eldery folks who were trying to file out. I ushered him aside, reminded him of our first meeting and the subsequent attempts to beg cash from me, and had a frank conversation with him about the odds of his still being “down on his luck” after 4 years.

    Unfortunately, all the folks we worked with in my 2 years at that church (who came for help) were the same, professional panhandlers who just lived on the streets and made the rounds of all the churches and ministries in town. It ‘s easier than breaking their addictions, dealing with their mental issues or just learning how to work for a living. Those people need to be re-programmed. Are they willing? Probably not. Can we force them? Hmmmm…..

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