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> About 30% of the homeless suffer from severe mental illness 80.2 million Americans (25% of the 325 million total population) suffer from mental illness so se

> About 30% of the homeless suffer from severe mental illness 80.2 million Americans (25% of the 325 million total population) suffer from mental illness so severe they take drugs to treat their condition: https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/people-taking-psychiatric-drugs/ https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/people-taking-psyc... This does not include the number of people who suffer from mental illness that does not require drugs for treatment or those who would benefit from drugs but who do not wish to or can not afford to take them, or who are undiagnosed. So the actual number with severe mental illness is much higher than 25% of the population. Above, DanHulton tracked down a study that also found that 30% of homeless suffer from mental illness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19707763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19707763 https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/loose-link-from-mental-health-to-homeless/news-story/34ae40327635d240ef4e12cc7122c940 https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/loose-link-f... > Their results, released this week, reveal just over 30 per cent had a mental disorder. > "The figure was much lower than the community perception and what other researchers had put out there," Dr Johnson told AAP. > About 15 per cent had a mental illness before becoming homeless, while slightly more, 16 per cent, developed a disorder while on the street. Since only 15 percent were ill before becoming homeless, this means that homeless people are much less mentally ill than the general public. It is a disproven myth that homeless people are more likely to be mentally ill than the general public. It is also a dangerous myth since belief in this myth drives nearly all discussion and proposed solutions (such as institutionalization, imprisonment and forced drugging) to address the problems of widespread poverty, lack of universal basic medical care, lack of affordable decent shelter, etc, in the US and in several other industrialized modern countries.

gridlockd 8y ago
> 80.2 million Americans (25% of the 325 million total population) suffer from mental illness so severe they take drugs to treat their condition That's not the same as having "severe mental illness". Doctors in the US hand out psychomeds like candy to anyone who has a mild depression. That's how you get to 25%. > It is a disproven myth that homeless people are more likely to be mentally ill than the general public. It isn't. You just took some numbers from one bucket, put them next to numbers from another bucket and then concluded that for some unexplained reason, it's actually the people who become homeless that have on average better mental health than the general population. Non-Sequitur. Mind you, I never said that the majority of homeless people are mentally ill, but there's a set of hard cases that you will literally not be able to help with any program that is meant to get them off the streets.

gridlockd 8y ago

> 80.2 million Americans (25% of the 325 million total population) suffer from mental illness so severe they take drugs to treat their condition That's not the same as having "severe mental illness". Doctors in the US hand out psychomeds like candy to anyone who has a mild depression. That's how you get to 25%. > It is a disproven myth that homeless people are more likely to be mentally ill than the general public. It isn't. You just took some numbers from one bucket, put them next to numbers from another bucket and then concluded that for some unexplained reason, it's actually the people who become homeless that have on average better mental health than the general population. Non-Sequitur. Mind you, I never said that the majority of homeless people are mentally ill, but there's a set of hard cases that you will literally not be able to help with any program that is meant to get them off the streets.