People who struggle with mental illness are at greater risk for homelessness than the general population. Once they become unhoused, it’s even more difficult for a person with a mental health disorder to regain stability in their mental health or their housing. Carolina Dunes Behavioral Health treats patients with severe mental health disorders, and we recognize the importance of housing for the people we serve.
Facts About Homelessness and Mental Illness
Often, people who are unhoused are described as “choosing” homelessness or being undeserving of a home. When viewed through a lens of curiosity and compassion, however, it is easy to see how homelessness and mental illness feed into each other. “This isn’t a one-way street,” according to City Relief, a non-profit that has been serving unhoused people since 1989. “It’s a loop. A feedback cycle. A system that wears people down until even the strongest begin to break.”
- Starting in the 1960s, there was a push to close psychiatric institutions that kept mentally ill people locked up for years on end, without having the opportunity to live in their communities. Unfortunately, these were not replaced with adequate community resources, which has led to high rates of homelessness and criminalization among people with serious mental health disorders.
- In 2024, it was estimated that around 771,000 Americans were homeless at any given time in the United States. This was the largest number of homeless individuals in U.S. history.
- Housing instability and homelessness are strongly correlated with poor mental health outcomes in conditions including PTSD, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.
- Due to an ongoing housing shortage and stagnant wages in the United States, fueling a lack of affordability, more than half of all low-income households in the United States spend over 50 percent of their income on housing. Emergencies, big or small, can quickly put people in a position where they are not able to pay for their housing.
- Once a person becomes unhoused, employers may be reluctant to hire them, due to stigma surrounding homelessness, making it harder for them to obtain the funds they need to regain housing.
- People who are unhoused are more likely to suffer from chronic mental health disorders, especially depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
- Housing stability has been shown to decrease the severity of many chronic mental health conditions by reducing emergency room visits, hospitalizations, or the need for long-term inpatient mental health services.
- Without a stable address, it can be difficult to receive mail, which makes it more complicated to sign up for many available supports.
- People who are unhoused are more likely to experience chronic stress, exposure to violence, including rape, theft, and physical assaults, and disruption in daily life functions, including sleep and self-care.
- The rate of suicide is estimated to be ten times higher among unhoused people than for people who have safe, stable housing.
Addressing Homelessness
The issue of homelessness is a multifaceted problem, requiring solutions that are responsive to the various causes of housing instability. Some of the steps that can be taken include:
- Mental health practitioners partnering with social workers to help patients access housing resources and address underlying issues contributing to their struggle to maintain a home.
- Laws and policies can be implemented to subsidize housing costs for low-income families, fund programs that help unhoused people to address their behavioral health needs and offer supported employment opportunities, and assist groups that are overrepresented within the homeless population, such as veterans and former foster youth, to stay housed or get housing. Additionally, increasing the amount of money that people on disability receive to an amount that better allows them to afford housing and save money for emergencies.
- Housing-first programs allow people to recover from addiction while in safe, stable housing, instead of expecting them to get sober while they lack housing stability, which is far more difficult.
- Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is a type of community-based treatment for people with serious psychiatric disorders and a history of hospitalizations, which is more intensive and helpful in managing mental health and maintaining housing and other types of stability.
- Critical time intervention (CTI) is a strategy utilized to provide support for a duration of around nine months, which focuses on keeping people with mental health concerns supported and connected to services, loved ones, and the community.
At Carolina Dunes Behavioral Health in Leland, North Carolina, we want to see people with mental health disorders thrive. Our patients need safe, stable housing to regain the stability we all want and deserve.
