Cause Of Homelessness And Substance Abuse

“Don’t give homeless people money- they’ll probably just spend it on drugs! Give them food instead,” say many people who do not understand that not all homeless people are addicts but the ones that are sometimes cannot help it. Did you know that more than one-third of homeless people suffer from a serious untreated mental illness? According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, the leading causes for substance abuse are anxiety and depression. People who abuse drugs are usually just trying to cope and forget their normal life. Drug abuse in homeless people is one of the main reasons most people do not want to do anything about the problem of homelessness. To reduce the amount of bias towards people with addictions it needs to be understood that

In 2008, the US Conference of Mayors held a survey in which they asked 25 cities what were the three major causes of homelessness in their communities. The survey showed that the third largest cause of homelessness for single adults was mental illnesses. This was mentioned by fourty-eight percent of cities, meaning a total of 12 out of these 25 cities was hit hard by mental illness. For homeless families, mental illness was mentioned by twelve percent of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness. Genuine dysfunctional behaviors upset individuals' capacity to complete key parts of day by day life, for example, self-consideration and household management. Mental illnesses might also keep individuals from shaping and keeping up stable connections or make individuals misjudge others' direction and respond nonsensically. And the result of this is usually that they begin pushing away the people who matter and will try to help. People such as caregivers, family, and friends and these people may be the providers in their lives and the only thing keeping them from becoming

Substance abuse by itself is insufficient and should be joined with opportunities for housing that comes with support. And while housing is probably the most important thing to homeless people, it should be accompanied by programs that help them out. Such as, examples listed by the National Coalition for the Homeless, which are “mental health treatment, physical health care, education and employment opportunities, peer support, and daily living and money management skills training.”