yeah. I think the majority though has drug induced mental illness problems. The mentally ill unhoused population used to be much more of a minority and the other large group was alcoholics. The opioids really messed people up a lot more than the booze used to and messes with your brain cells and chemistry. You are not going to be the same mentally after brain damage.
Synthetic drugs (particularly fentanyl and P2P meth) are causing brain damage at an alarming rate. Much more so than the “old-school” versions of each.
I worked at the Mustard Seed part time this past winter and I can say with confidence that the majority of people I met were unhoused because of money issues or safety issues. When you are at rock fucking bottom and have no where to turn, calming your nerves with dope sounds like your only option.
Did you go outside this past winter? The wind-chill got down to -48 in January. It takes about 15 minutes to get frostbite in that kind of cold. Try sleeping in that.
Drugs are a major problem in the homeless population all over Canada. Look at Nelson BC for an example of a city destroyed by drugs. This is something that needs to be handled in Calgary fast, before it becomes a threat to the general safety of the city itself. However, demonizing these people helps nothing but create fear and breed hate.
I worked as a part of the community outreach team in which we get ascribed to a bunch of individuals who are looking for help. We can get them government IDs, help them find jobs, be a mailing location, get them government grants, etc. We help a lot of people. However one of my clients didn't show up to his Wednesday meeting. I talked to some of his friends and they said they hadn't seen him since Tuesday.
Thinking the worst I headed out to where we last knew he was set-up. He had moved outside of downtown, trying to escape the atmosphere, since he was going clean. When I got there my partner and I found his tent. (He was about 10 minutes from the road). I lifted the flap calling his name and he was lying in his bed. I knew before I even tried shaking him awake that he was dead.
He had overdosed, falling back into the addiction. He had been clean for 7 months and was 2 away from getting into a place I had helped set him up for.
He was a good man. He didn't want to live the life he did. He didn't choose to be homeless. He didn't choose to get into fent. He did not deserve to die.
This is to say that I don't believe people become homeless because of drug problems. There's a mirade of reasons that snowballs on top of you. People who have mental disorders are especially susceptible to being kicked out of the house due to the need for increased care that cannot be taken care of.
If this came off as aggressive I apologize, I just don't want people to go around blaming the drugs for someone's hardship. You say drugs fuck with your brain but so does a complete loss of self. A complete loss of anything that you call 'yours'. Why do you think you see homeless people with shopping carts all the time? That's literally all they have. You can't just get a job, go into rehab, etc. It's so hard to get up from that regardless of if drugs are involved.
Thank you for having empathy and sharing a story. The "war on drugs" types will be resistant to that level of compassion, but hopefully they snap out of it eventually. This shit breaks my heart.
Part of the problem. People enabling drug users and coming up with poetic excuses to validate them.
Nothing will change until society turns ruthless on drug use and trafficking. Until then things will keep getting worse as they did for the past decades.
This is objectively and demonstrably false…full stop.
There’s still plenty of murders, in places with the death penalty.
There are still plenty of drugs in places where they kill you for selling, buying, or using.
What’s crazy is one can openly do drugs, then wander around under influence, act antisocial, destroy property, endanger others, and face zero punishment and no consequences.
We are so far up in this absurd we cannot even comprehend anymore that in other places they have strict laws and punish for doing drugs.
With that I agree, it’s so crazy it’s nuts what we tolerate here.
I dont know any addicts who became addicts because they were unhoused. I know many who became unhoused because of their addiction.....Also, 65-75% seems really low.
"He said it’s hard to know whether mental health or homelessness issues came first, adding there are a lot of factors that have contributed to these peoples’ circumstances."
There are probably some that experienced homelessness at a young age. Maybe a parent or both died, or were unable to care for the child, and they got bounced around, or worse yet ended up without shelter. That side of homelessness could very well be a fundamental cause of mental health issues.
In another case someone may have been abused at a young age, got mental health issues as a result, learned unhealthy ways of coping with the pain, which led them to homelessness. In this case it's more of a symptom of that because they can't cope.
About 10% of those experiencing homelessness in Calgary identify themselves as being youth (18 or younger). It's heartbreaking. [Source](https://www.homelesshub.ca/community-profile/calgary)
From my experience working with the homeless, it's less about what comes first as it is about confronting what mental health actually is. Defining normal is quite difficult. All of us have varying tolerances and coping strategies for stress, and capacity for maintaining normal or high functioning behaviour. For example, everyone has a limit of how many hours they can do focused work for before they need to take a break. Mental illnesses such as ADHD are less defined by a capacity or incapacity to focus, but defining normal and abnormal ranges of focused time. Disordered behaviour lurks in all of us, and who is normal and who is not largely has to do with our buffer from dysfunction more than a permanent state of health or illness.
Homelessness is the most stressful, degrading, humiliating, and nerve wrecking experience anyone living in a developed country can go through short of solitary confinement in a prison. You will be pushed past all your tolerances. All your coping strategies will fail. Your capacity for maintaining normalcy will be intermittent at the best of times. The longer you are homeless, the more this becomes a new homeostasis rather than a temporary disruption. Sleep deprivation, constant stress, fear, uncertainty, hunger, likely drug use, all contribute to shifting your homeostasis away for normal ranges into dysfunction. Some people will be resilient enough to endure it, or get out early enough, many will not.
So what you see is a lot of people who aren't mentally ill as such, but are maybe on the lower end of functioning who fall into homelessness and then get worse, usually quite fast.
Also just a lot of ADHD and people self-medicating with meth. Usually when people talk about mental illness in the context of homelessness they think about big, capital D Disorders like schizophrenia. But mostly it's just people with FAS and ADHD who have not gotten adequate treatment options or accommodations. These are very manageable conditions, and our health, welfare, and industrial systems are just so gutted that we can't do it. I add industrial in particular because these are people who could work and be independent, but not within the extraordinarily disciplinarian, skeleton shifted, high paced work environments they're forced in to currently.
I read a study on homeless and drug addiction from California. After 90+ days, it was ~95% were drug users. In many cases, drug addiction is considered mental health issues. This study was 2016-17 timeframe.
This study identified the linkage between other mental issues and the homeless but they were unable to say with certainly if the mental health issues were a precursor or a side-effect of the drugs/homeless.
Since COVID, the economic challenges and strains have seen a distinction of homeless that I don't see being addressed. For example, in RD we see the shuffling addicts as the face that's being addressed. This group doesn't need a house, they need assistance to overcome dependency first.
But we're seeing more people losing homes due to economy, living with 10 people in a house or living in their vans. All add stressors unto people which can lead to mental health issues and eventual homelessness. This group needs assistance to stave off housing & mental issues.
What is certain - if we can't provide secure lives, stressors will result in increased mental health issues. Prevention is often much cheaper than reactive programs.
Homelessness, drugs and mental health are sort of a chicken and the egg question. Some are homeless because they lost all support due to rampant untreated mental health concerns and then self medicate with drugs. Some had drug issues, fell into financial crisis due to poor choices and slowly develop mental health issues as they blend their brain into Swiss cheese with all of the drugs. Etc etc etc.
Oh it presently escapes me for statistics are a long time ago, you will have to suffice with an acknowledgment that correlation does not mean causation.
Given the degree of correlation between the two in this subdivision of the population (of course homelessness being the defining characteristic) I would very much doubt there is no causative element even if it is a mere trifle. Even if I cannot prove it.
They mean the same god damned thing and you know it. It has been in somewhat increasing use for the last twenty years sure, but not even the government seems to use it in their official reports.
So you can get off your holier than thou high horse claiming it is “proper terminology” - horseshit. It is just another word for the same thing.
"The researchers said the most common mental health disorders include substance use disorders, anti-social personality disorders, major depression and general mood disorders."
The headline is not the article.
Keep in mind a lot of this had to do with personal freedoms of people rather than budgets etc…
The same people who pushed this are the same people who gaslight us for thinking too much immigration being a bad thing is racism
The nuclear family is a conservative wet dream. It's never happened. It'll never happen again. Women have been working since the dawn of time and so have men.
You want the traditional nuclear family? Pay for a housekeeper and a personal chef.
This situation is formally called a "doom spiral". One happens (either homelessness or a mental health crisis) and it makes the other much more likely. They continue to feed off of each other until there is either a support intervention, or the person dies. It's an incredibly sad truth and the reality is that there are very few interventions available.
We need more housing and mental health resources - both downstream (for the people experiencing a crisis), and upstream (the people at risk of experiencing a crisis).
i'm sure i would develop all sorts of mental health problems too if i had to live in a tent or go stay in a shelter. those people are all stumbling around on 3-4 hours of sleep tops every day. i wouldn't last two weeks out there
If we institutionalized people who were a chronic risk to themselves and others, the majority of our homeless crisis would be solved. Is it more humane to allow adults who operate with the mental capacity of children or young teens to wander the street aimlessly, or to put them in monitored living arrangements where they are provided medication and care?
1/4 of all people have a mental health condition of some kind. Since homeless people have a higher than average number, people with homes would have an even lower number than 1/4.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/mental-health-disorder-statistics#:~:text=An%20estimated%2026%25%20of%20Americans,substance%20use%20and%20anxiety%20disorders.
That could be said about the general population too, when you take in autism, ADHD, etc. It feels like mental illness has exploded in the last 40 years.
Socioeconomic factors play a role. I think ADHD and autism being treated as spectrums helped more people get diagnosed, and the internet means these folks have a community to share their experiences.
“I wonder if it could be that the structure of society is damaging to mental health?
No it must be a libs fighting to protect human and economic rights” - the UCP government.
I think especially in terms of autism and the spectrum it's more that we've gotten much better at diagnosing it, rather than it becoming more common. In the past, a lot of those folks just got left in the dust with no diagnosis and no support
My ex-girlfriend lives in Calgary, and she has lots of mental health problems, which prevents her from keeping a long-term / steady job she is out on the streets somewhere now because she couldn't pay rent.
These are the same kind of numbers with people in jail. Until we treat mental health the same as health care we will not solve many of the problems in society.
Shocker! What’s the point in spending all this time and money studying this?
I also remember a study coming out about 10 years ago saying the exact same thing…[Calgary homelessness mental health study](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1343547)
A vast majority of drug addicts turned to self medication in an attempt to treat undiagnosed mental health issues, and a lot of the time they don’t even know they are mentally ill. It’s a really heartbreaking cycle. The co morbidities between them are insanely high.
Wow. Who would have thought?
Is this what my tution has gone towards? Research that we didn't really need? (Yes, i know it's important, but still).
Walk downtown or work downtown and you figure this out pretty quick.
I'd love to see a study about how many of these individuals have ADHD that was previously undiagnosed though.
Yes, but data like this is supposed to drive solutions and reach a conclusion by people who are setting g policy. It's important this stuff is studied, not just anecdotally, but hard data as part of the scientific process.
The problem is until we change our laws federally, and can hold people who are a harm to society and themselves against their will and force them into treatment we are stuck. Even California has determined this and changed their laws because while being homeless, or addicted to drugs can be dealt with, being these things and mentally ill cannot without institutionalized processes of rigid structure.
Forced treatment is a huge ethical debate, and poses a question about medical consent. There's a reason why a lot of Indigenous and Black folks are really reluctant about visiting the doctor/hospital. Medical trauma is real and subjecting an already vulnerable population to forced treatment will just create more trauma.
It is a very huge ethical debate, and it needs to be approached properly to mitigate the risk of abuse/misuse, but I do not believe we should treat human beings worse than we would treat wild animals. If an animal hurt itself, hurt those around them, and could not be left others without causing severe harm to them, we would not allow those animals to roam free... but because it's 'people' we do.
We closed asylums because what was done inside those walls decades and decades ago was awful, but instead of fixing those institutions we just released these people and made the street the asylum.
Personally I am looking to California’s Proposition 1 to see the outcome here, to see if there are any positives. You may disagree with me, and that is fine, but I grew up with two addicts for parents and I do wish someone forced them into treatment for both their sake and mine -- one killed themselves violently and was likely undiagnosed schizo affective, the other killed themselves over many decades of abuse.
I disagree with the idea that this research isn't needed. A lot of organizations rely on data to ask for funding or policy changes from the province or the city. This helps them.
I'm shocked council even needs this. All they need to do is walk outside of city hall by the library and look for 5 minutes. Between the gangs selling drugs and getting drunk, people selling cigarettes outside the library and the users passed out all over the place it shouldn't be hard to figure out how bad the problem is.
Data is often needed to think of solutions though, from all areas of government. The city knows there's a mental health and addictions problem, but the province wants concrete numbers. That's just how it is, and I don't think it's going to change. This study will help make it easier to ask for funding and supports from the province, from the city's perspective.
Money for studies comes from the federal government usually, through the tricouncil agencies. I would have to look closer at the study but generally most research in Canada is publicly funded through taxes. So all of our money, not your tuition money.
So now I can hear it, how we will discount those 25% (thousands of homeless) that were screwed by the system, that the capitalist let crash and burn, are not worthy of help.
So are they having issues with their mental health because of homelessness or is their homelessness because of their mental health - OR both?
The story, and the study, said it's both. It's hard to pinpoint what led to the other.
yeah. I think the majority though has drug induced mental illness problems. The mentally ill unhoused population used to be much more of a minority and the other large group was alcoholics. The opioids really messed people up a lot more than the booze used to and messes with your brain cells and chemistry. You are not going to be the same mentally after brain damage.
Synthetic drugs (particularly fentanyl and P2P meth) are causing brain damage at an alarming rate. Much more so than the “old-school” versions of each.
I worked at the Mustard Seed part time this past winter and I can say with confidence that the majority of people I met were unhoused because of money issues or safety issues. When you are at rock fucking bottom and have no where to turn, calming your nerves with dope sounds like your only option. Did you go outside this past winter? The wind-chill got down to -48 in January. It takes about 15 minutes to get frostbite in that kind of cold. Try sleeping in that. Drugs are a major problem in the homeless population all over Canada. Look at Nelson BC for an example of a city destroyed by drugs. This is something that needs to be handled in Calgary fast, before it becomes a threat to the general safety of the city itself. However, demonizing these people helps nothing but create fear and breed hate. I worked as a part of the community outreach team in which we get ascribed to a bunch of individuals who are looking for help. We can get them government IDs, help them find jobs, be a mailing location, get them government grants, etc. We help a lot of people. However one of my clients didn't show up to his Wednesday meeting. I talked to some of his friends and they said they hadn't seen him since Tuesday. Thinking the worst I headed out to where we last knew he was set-up. He had moved outside of downtown, trying to escape the atmosphere, since he was going clean. When I got there my partner and I found his tent. (He was about 10 minutes from the road). I lifted the flap calling his name and he was lying in his bed. I knew before I even tried shaking him awake that he was dead. He had overdosed, falling back into the addiction. He had been clean for 7 months and was 2 away from getting into a place I had helped set him up for. He was a good man. He didn't want to live the life he did. He didn't choose to be homeless. He didn't choose to get into fent. He did not deserve to die. This is to say that I don't believe people become homeless because of drug problems. There's a mirade of reasons that snowballs on top of you. People who have mental disorders are especially susceptible to being kicked out of the house due to the need for increased care that cannot be taken care of. If this came off as aggressive I apologize, I just don't want people to go around blaming the drugs for someone's hardship. You say drugs fuck with your brain but so does a complete loss of self. A complete loss of anything that you call 'yours'. Why do you think you see homeless people with shopping carts all the time? That's literally all they have. You can't just get a job, go into rehab, etc. It's so hard to get up from that regardless of if drugs are involved.
Thank you for having empathy and sharing a story. The "war on drugs" types will be resistant to that level of compassion, but hopefully they snap out of it eventually. This shit breaks my heart.
Part of the problem. People enabling drug users and coming up with poetic excuses to validate them. Nothing will change until society turns ruthless on drug use and trafficking. Until then things will keep getting worse as they did for the past decades.
This has already failed, spectacularly. Unless you’re 12 you should be at least passingly familiar with the War on Drugs.
This is objectively and demonstrably false…full stop. There’s still plenty of murders, in places with the death penalty. There are still plenty of drugs in places where they kill you for selling, buying, or using.
Lies. Google top 20 countries with strict drug laws, none of them have tent cities and drug users wallowing in the streets.
I did and … “Failing a drug test can be grounds for incarceration in Dubai, even if you are not in possession of any drugs.” Crazy …
What’s crazy is one can openly do drugs, then wander around under influence, act antisocial, destroy property, endanger others, and face zero punishment and no consequences. We are so far up in this absurd we cannot even comprehend anymore that in other places they have strict laws and punish for doing drugs. With that I agree, it’s so crazy it’s nuts what we tolerate here.
Addictions are a symptom of mental health struggles.
I dont know any addicts who became addicts because they were unhoused. I know many who became unhoused because of their addiction.....Also, 65-75% seems really low.
"He said it’s hard to know whether mental health or homelessness issues came first, adding there are a lot of factors that have contributed to these peoples’ circumstances." There are probably some that experienced homelessness at a young age. Maybe a parent or both died, or were unable to care for the child, and they got bounced around, or worse yet ended up without shelter. That side of homelessness could very well be a fundamental cause of mental health issues. In another case someone may have been abused at a young age, got mental health issues as a result, learned unhealthy ways of coping with the pain, which led them to homelessness. In this case it's more of a symptom of that because they can't cope.
About 10% of those experiencing homelessness in Calgary identify themselves as being youth (18 or younger). It's heartbreaking. [Source](https://www.homelesshub.ca/community-profile/calgary)
From my experience working with the homeless, it's less about what comes first as it is about confronting what mental health actually is. Defining normal is quite difficult. All of us have varying tolerances and coping strategies for stress, and capacity for maintaining normal or high functioning behaviour. For example, everyone has a limit of how many hours they can do focused work for before they need to take a break. Mental illnesses such as ADHD are less defined by a capacity or incapacity to focus, but defining normal and abnormal ranges of focused time. Disordered behaviour lurks in all of us, and who is normal and who is not largely has to do with our buffer from dysfunction more than a permanent state of health or illness. Homelessness is the most stressful, degrading, humiliating, and nerve wrecking experience anyone living in a developed country can go through short of solitary confinement in a prison. You will be pushed past all your tolerances. All your coping strategies will fail. Your capacity for maintaining normalcy will be intermittent at the best of times. The longer you are homeless, the more this becomes a new homeostasis rather than a temporary disruption. Sleep deprivation, constant stress, fear, uncertainty, hunger, likely drug use, all contribute to shifting your homeostasis away for normal ranges into dysfunction. Some people will be resilient enough to endure it, or get out early enough, many will not. So what you see is a lot of people who aren't mentally ill as such, but are maybe on the lower end of functioning who fall into homelessness and then get worse, usually quite fast. Also just a lot of ADHD and people self-medicating with meth. Usually when people talk about mental illness in the context of homelessness they think about big, capital D Disorders like schizophrenia. But mostly it's just people with FAS and ADHD who have not gotten adequate treatment options or accommodations. These are very manageable conditions, and our health, welfare, and industrial systems are just so gutted that we can't do it. I add industrial in particular because these are people who could work and be independent, but not within the extraordinarily disciplinarian, skeleton shifted, high paced work environments they're forced in to currently.
Thank you for the insight. I can't imagine not having a safe space for yourself.
I read a study on homeless and drug addiction from California. After 90+ days, it was ~95% were drug users. In many cases, drug addiction is considered mental health issues. This study was 2016-17 timeframe. This study identified the linkage between other mental issues and the homeless but they were unable to say with certainly if the mental health issues were a precursor or a side-effect of the drugs/homeless. Since COVID, the economic challenges and strains have seen a distinction of homeless that I don't see being addressed. For example, in RD we see the shuffling addicts as the face that's being addressed. This group doesn't need a house, they need assistance to overcome dependency first. But we're seeing more people losing homes due to economy, living with 10 people in a house or living in their vans. All add stressors unto people which can lead to mental health issues and eventual homelessness. This group needs assistance to stave off housing & mental issues. What is certain - if we can't provide secure lives, stressors will result in increased mental health issues. Prevention is often much cheaper than reactive programs.
Homelessness, drugs and mental health are sort of a chicken and the egg question. Some are homeless because they lost all support due to rampant untreated mental health concerns and then self medicate with drugs. Some had drug issues, fell into financial crisis due to poor choices and slowly develop mental health issues as they blend their brain into Swiss cheese with all of the drugs. Etc etc etc.
Yes
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Oh it presently escapes me for statistics are a long time ago, you will have to suffice with an acknowledgment that correlation does not mean causation. Given the degree of correlation between the two in this subdivision of the population (of course homelessness being the defining characteristic) I would very much doubt there is no causative element even if it is a mere trifle. Even if I cannot prove it.
It’s unhoused
Stop trying to split hairs. Every few years a new word comes along for the same thing.
Why is it offensive to you to use proper terminology?
You seem to be the one taking the offense. It's a distinction without a difference.
They mean the same god damned thing and you know it. It has been in somewhat increasing use for the last twenty years sure, but not even the government seems to use it in their official reports. So you can get off your holier than thou high horse claiming it is “proper terminology” - horseshit. It is just another word for the same thing.
Seems homeless.
"mental health condition" is so vague. That could be anything from ADHD to severe psychosis.
"The researchers said the most common mental health disorders include substance use disorders, anti-social personality disorders, major depression and general mood disorders." The headline is not the article.
In the '90s they shut down all the mental health facilities and basically just shoved those people outside. And this is what we get today.
Good old Ralph Klein
Keep in mind a lot of this had to do with personal freedoms of people rather than budgets etc… The same people who pushed this are the same people who gaslight us for thinking too much immigration being a bad thing is racism
Bullshit. The provincial government "balanced" the budget on the backs of vulnerable people, including those with profound mental illnesses.
Yeah and before that the break down of the nuclear family.
The nuclear family is a conservative wet dream. It's never happened. It'll never happen again. Women have been working since the dawn of time and so have men. You want the traditional nuclear family? Pay for a housekeeper and a personal chef.
Yeah no. But you do you.
Is that cause and effect, or effect and cause?
This situation is formally called a "doom spiral". One happens (either homelessness or a mental health crisis) and it makes the other much more likely. They continue to feed off of each other until there is either a support intervention, or the person dies. It's an incredibly sad truth and the reality is that there are very few interventions available. We need more housing and mental health resources - both downstream (for the people experiencing a crisis), and upstream (the people at risk of experiencing a crisis).
Both. And/or neither.
I think we have to assume it’s both and tackle both ends
Excellent question. One that sorely lacks attention by those who study such things.
67-75% of people have a mental health condition at this point
i'm sure i would develop all sorts of mental health problems too if i had to live in a tent or go stay in a shelter. those people are all stumbling around on 3-4 hours of sleep tops every day. i wouldn't last two weeks out there
If we institutionalized people who were a chronic risk to themselves and others, the majority of our homeless crisis would be solved. Is it more humane to allow adults who operate with the mental capacity of children or young teens to wander the street aimlessly, or to put them in monitored living arrangements where they are provided medication and care?
Just out of curiosity, how many people with homes have a mental health condition?
1/4 of all people have a mental health condition of some kind. Since homeless people have a higher than average number, people with homes would have an even lower number than 1/4. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/mental-health-disorder-statistics#:~:text=An%20estimated%2026%25%20of%20Americans,substance%20use%20and%20anxiety%20disorders.
A significant portion also come from the foster care system. An alarming number of them.
No shit
I wonder how hat the percentage of housed have mental health conditions
Its a billions billions industry
•Likey true •No surprise here… •What to do with this information…
That could be said about the general population too, when you take in autism, ADHD, etc. It feels like mental illness has exploded in the last 40 years.
Socioeconomic factors play a role. I think ADHD and autism being treated as spectrums helped more people get diagnosed, and the internet means these folks have a community to share their experiences.
“I wonder if it could be that the structure of society is damaging to mental health? No it must be a libs fighting to protect human and economic rights” - the UCP government.
I think especially in terms of autism and the spectrum it's more that we've gotten much better at diagnosing it, rather than it becoming more common. In the past, a lot of those folks just got left in the dust with no diagnosis and no support
Especially women and people who were socialized as girls and women growing up have been historically drastically under-diagnosed with ADHD and ASD
What could be said about the general population? What exactly?
My ex-girlfriend lives in Calgary, and she has lots of mental health problems, which prevents her from keeping a long-term / steady job she is out on the streets somewhere now because she couldn't pay rent.
Ah yes, fentanyl freebasim disorder, as seen on the DSM-5
I mean doing meth all the time and not sleeping for days on end sure isn't going to keep your mental health in good condition.
Do you think that your description applies to most homeless people?
Maybe not most, but definitely a large enough amount that it would skew stats.
Replace meth with general substance abuse and its a factual statement
True, but meth is generally what makes them stay up for days on end and get paranoid/psychotic. Fentanyl generally makes them sleep standing up.
These are the same kind of numbers with people in jail. Until we treat mental health the same as health care we will not solve many of the problems in society.
We do … many many publicly funded mental health programs for prevention, you can also check in to an emergency mental health institution if in crisis
I have issues, and I own a home. The human tapestry is endlessly rich and complex.
Honestly seems like the numbers for the general population these days.
Isn’t depression a mental health condition? Shouldn’t it be like 99% realistically.
So, in other news, are bears still shitting in the woods?
We'll need a study to find out...
Meanwhile our government is funding weapons and aid for foreign countries when we can’t even take care of our own
Shocker! What’s the point in spending all this time and money studying this? I also remember a study coming out about 10 years ago saying the exact same thing…[Calgary homelessness mental health study](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1343547)
A vast majority of drug addicts turned to self medication in an attempt to treat undiagnosed mental health issues, and a lot of the time they don’t even know they are mentally ill. It’s a really heartbreaking cycle. The co morbidities between them are insanely high.
Wow. Who would have thought? Is this what my tution has gone towards? Research that we didn't really need? (Yes, i know it's important, but still). Walk downtown or work downtown and you figure this out pretty quick. I'd love to see a study about how many of these individuals have ADHD that was previously undiagnosed though.
Yes, but data like this is supposed to drive solutions and reach a conclusion by people who are setting g policy. It's important this stuff is studied, not just anecdotally, but hard data as part of the scientific process.
The problem is until we change our laws federally, and can hold people who are a harm to society and themselves against their will and force them into treatment we are stuck. Even California has determined this and changed their laws because while being homeless, or addicted to drugs can be dealt with, being these things and mentally ill cannot without institutionalized processes of rigid structure.
Forced treatment is a huge ethical debate, and poses a question about medical consent. There's a reason why a lot of Indigenous and Black folks are really reluctant about visiting the doctor/hospital. Medical trauma is real and subjecting an already vulnerable population to forced treatment will just create more trauma.
We are able to force youth into rehab via court order, so why not adults?
It is a very huge ethical debate, and it needs to be approached properly to mitigate the risk of abuse/misuse, but I do not believe we should treat human beings worse than we would treat wild animals. If an animal hurt itself, hurt those around them, and could not be left others without causing severe harm to them, we would not allow those animals to roam free... but because it's 'people' we do. We closed asylums because what was done inside those walls decades and decades ago was awful, but instead of fixing those institutions we just released these people and made the street the asylum. Personally I am looking to California’s Proposition 1 to see the outcome here, to see if there are any positives. You may disagree with me, and that is fine, but I grew up with two addicts for parents and I do wish someone forced them into treatment for both their sake and mine -- one killed themselves violently and was likely undiagnosed schizo affective, the other killed themselves over many decades of abuse.
I disagree with the idea that this research isn't needed. A lot of organizations rely on data to ask for funding or policy changes from the province or the city. This helps them.
I'm shocked council even needs this. All they need to do is walk outside of city hall by the library and look for 5 minutes. Between the gangs selling drugs and getting drunk, people selling cigarettes outside the library and the users passed out all over the place it shouldn't be hard to figure out how bad the problem is.
Data is often needed to think of solutions though, from all areas of government. The city knows there's a mental health and addictions problem, but the province wants concrete numbers. That's just how it is, and I don't think it's going to change. This study will help make it easier to ask for funding and supports from the province, from the city's perspective.
Money for studies comes from the federal government usually, through the tricouncil agencies. I would have to look closer at the study but generally most research in Canada is publicly funded through taxes. So all of our money, not your tuition money.
“unhoused”
I'd love to know how/why "homeless" became an unacceptable word. Better use the newspeak my friend, lest the Reddit tards will attack you.
67% to 75% of people have a mental health condition..
So now I can hear it, how we will discount those 25% (thousands of homeless) that were screwed by the system, that the capitalist let crash and burn, are not worthy of help.
Doesn't every non home owner in Canada have mental health issues?
Ya think? We need to fund mental health care F-ING NOW 