While I thank our neighbors to the north for being so on-point here, my initial response to the article was - and please forgive my vulgarity here- "No shit, Sherlock? Now tell us something we didn't know...."
Once past this cynicism however, I was glad to see some hard numbers on the problem because it is numbers like these that motivate public administrators to loosen purse strings in order to combat the associated problems.
| CanWest News Service |
When a homeless person is hospitalized, more than half of the time it is because of a mental disorder, according to a new report on the relationship between mental health and homelessness.
A Canadian Institute for Health Information report, released yesterday, said in 2005-06 mental health and behaviour disorders were responsible for 52 per cent of hospital stays among homeless people, compared with only five per cent of the general population.
It also found the number of emergency-room visits for homeless people was far higher than the general population - 35 per cent compared with three per cent.
"The homeless don't have family doctors, so they're using either the on-site services at shelters, or they are using these emergency-type services that are available," explained Elizabeth Votta, the report's primary author, in an interview.
The analysis did not include Quebec hospitals and mostly used data from Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary.
The report, which determined that on any given day there are 10,000 people in Canada without a roof over their head, provided an overview of published research on mental health and homelessness and was the first time CIHI had tracked the number of hospital visits for homeless people in a given year.
The most common type of mental-health problem recorded for homeless patients was substance abuse (54 per cent) followed by schizophrenia or other delusional disorders. Substance abuse was more than twice as common for male homeless patients than female, the study said.
The CIHI report said people who are homeless are more likely to experience mental illness or poor mental health, but which comes first - the illness or the homelessness - is more difficult to determine. For some people, the health issues precede the housing issues and for others, it is the reverse, Votta said.
"We know that not everyone with poor mental health or a mental illness is going to become homeless and not everyone who is homeless is going to develop a mental illness, but the longer you're homeless the more likely you are to develop the poor mental health," she said.
In other words, being homeless is a risk factor for mental illness, a finding that is backed up by the research that CIHI examined, Votta said.
Studies show homeless Canadians experience high stress levels and they have lower perceived self-worth and less social support, CIHI said.
