[vkou]

Yes, homelessness absolutely causes people to go insane. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted.

But some people end up homeless because their mental health issues weren't treated (or weren't treated well) while they were still housed and functional. It can only take a few bad episodes to lose your job, and the next job, and then your home, and then you're screaming at the pigeons at 2pm in SOMA.

[nobody9999]

That's certainly true. When I was homeless (nearly 40 years ago, and thankfully only for seven months or so), I absolutely self-medicated to deal with the hopelessness, isolation and fear I felt not having any place to go.

Interestingly (and yes, I know I'm an outlier), about nine months after getting off the streets, it was not wanting that again that got me to stop self-medicating (cocaine) when I found myself getting ready to spend my rent money on drugs, and haven't touched cocaine since.

Sadly, many folks are unable to get off that particular hamster wheel without lots of help.

All that said, as others have pointed out, those with mental health and substance abuse issues are a tiny minority of the homeless population. In fact, a majority of Americans are just one unexpected $600 emergency from becoming homeless themselves.

And that makes me sad.

[seanmcdirmid]

> All that said, as others have pointed out, those with mental health and substance abuse issues are a tiny minority of the homeless population. In fact, a majority of Americans are just one unexpected $600 emergency from becoming homeless themselves.

They are a tiny amount of the homeless population but not a tiny amount of the chronic homeless population. That is an important distinction: people who are homeless for a couple of weeks vs. people who are homeless for years. The sad case occurs when temporary homelessness converts into chronic homelessness, which often corresponds with substance abuse (i.e. someone became homeless, but rather than having that problem fixed, it just became much worse). IMHO, we should dump a lot of resources in making sure easy cases of homelessness (just need a house) don't become hard cases (need drug rehab, lots of additional social resources).

[seanmcdirmid]

A lot of mental illness is simply drug/substance abuse related, which...yes, you might start going for cheap street drugs after becoming homeless, but it is also likely your parents kicked you out because you wouldn't stop doing drugs.