[lapetitejort]

Everything I've heard and read from current and former unhoused people points to the fact that mental health drops rapidly upon losing a home. Not being able to sleep a whole night without waking up and being fearful of people invading your space is sufficient. Add in food insecurity, nearby drug use, violence, etc and your brain gets fried. Just like a physical injury, this wound could take months or years to heal.

[Hermitian909]

I've worked with the homeless, this is absolutely the case. Being assaulted or stolen from while homeless is a matter of when not if once you've also lost your car. Sexual assault is also not uncommon.

Drugs drown out the non-stop pain of existence.

[gilleain]

I think of the problems that the homeless face as being like an evil roundabout. Although you enter with one of mental illness, addiction, or despair (or several, the analogy is imperfect) the roundabout mixes these up until you have them all.

Ultimately, we are all responsible in some sense for our own behaviour. However the freedom of people to choose to do the right thing is often severely limited by circumstance and previous choices.