13 May Homelessness and mental health; a gendered issue?
Criteria:
My competition entry is produced for the Mind media awards. The criteria for this award is that the piece of work must have been produced between June 2018 and June 2019. The content should be relevant to mental health and challenge the perception of mental health in the current media. It should be produced responsibly and safe for the intended audience and must give a voice to people with mental health problems, including at least one first-hand testimony. Based on my feedback, I created an article, alongside an audio package. I contacted homeless shelters who gave me some information on particular people who wish to tell their stories regarding mental health and homelessness. I also gathered a variety of people’s views about how men and women find these two topics, with one person giving in-depth insight to her past with mental health and homelessness.
Article:
Imagine you’re living on the streets. No food. No clean source of water. Not sure where you’re going to sleep tonight. Now imagine on top of all of this, you’re suffering from your mental health. The uncertainty building up inside and keeps knocking you down at every hurdle. This is something that, according to the charity Shelter, at least 320,000 people have to face every day (2018).
Homelessness is becoming more and more of a growing problem, not only across the UK but around the world. This is similar to the number of people who are recognising that they, or loved ones around them, are suffering from their mental health. There is a lot of research out there that link the two problems together, but it’s uncertain to know which one causes the other. According to the charity Mind, homelessness and mental health problems can be identified as a chicken-and-egg situation. This means we know that either can be a product of the other, however, which one comes first is unclear.
Here are some key facts and statistics about homelessness and mental health, around the UK;
- The big issue, 2018: 4 in 5 homeless people suffer from a mental health problem.
- A third of people who use ‘Crisis’ has a history of mental health problems.
- A study of 2,500 people around the UK, found that 45% had been diagnosed with mental health problems, 80% reporting some form of mental health problem.
- The most prevalent health problems amongst homeless individuals are substance misuse (62.5%), mental health problems (53.7%), or a combination of the two (42.6%).
45-year-old Louise Cast believes that mental health and homelessness go excessively hand in hand together, either one of them can cause the other to occur. She stated this whilst telling her own story with homelessness and mental health struggles. Her difficulties arose after leaving a job that she no longer wanted to work in, as it was having a massive effect on her own mental health. She then struggled to find other work, and spent some time living with a family member, after she lost her home and had nowhere else to go. Here is her story:
Whilst there are many charities out there who offer support for both people suffering from homelessness and mental health problems, there tends to be quite a long waiting list for the services. Many believe that there is just not enough mental health support for those who are homeless, or simply the homeless in general. Studies from mentalhealth.org have reported a higher prevalence of mental health problems in the homeless, compared to the general population.
The Telegraph also reported that of the 13,972 suicides in the UK between 2003 and 2013, almost a third were classed as ‘patient suicides’, meaning the victim had been in contact with mental health services in the year before their death. By 2030, it is estimated that there will be around two million more adults in the UK with mental health problems than there were four years ago. Mental health services are hard to access if you are homeless. There’s usually a long waiting list and you will need to offer a point of contact, so they are able to get back in touch with you once a slot is available.
However, it isn’t just the long waiting lists that are having an effect on people accessing help. 23-year-old James Peirce, who suffered from a mixture of mental health problems through his teenage years, including depression, agoraphobia, and bulimia, stated that he struggled to get access to mental health services due to him being a man. “I was on the waiting list for a very long time. It seemed like I kept getting bumped down because more and more women were coming forward asking for help. It was almost like they were getting the priority because they’re female, even though we were all suffering from our mental health.”
So, it’s clear that these two issues correlate with each other. But is there a difference in how these two issues are perceived, when it comes to being a man or a woman? There are many articles in the news that highlight the huge list of dangers that women face by living on the streets. But there are also long lists of statistics that show men are more likely to not receive the same kind of help for their mental health problems, as a woman would. There seems to be a wider focus in the media for women living on the streets, despite there being a higher percentage of men. For example, in an article written by the Telegraph, in the UK 2015, there were 3,355 homeless people in 27 different local authorities. 71% of these were men.
When asked if they think it is easy for men to access or find out help for their mental health and/or homelessness problems, people from a local charity had a general monotony of responses. Many felt that the help was well known about and just as easily accessible for men as it was women. But there was a consensus that many men find it difficult to speak up, without first being judged. One worker stated that “if a person really wanted to seek help then they can easily find that help through either the internet, family or friends. However, I feel it’s more about people not being willing to seek help about their mental health and that’s when bad things occur such as suicide.”
Therapist, Cole Fellows, had some similar opinions on the issue of men struggling to speak up. “Toxic masculinity has been in the news a lot lately, and one aspect of this is, I believe, that sadly, men tend to hide behind the facades they feel impelled to build. Because of this, I believe it is usually very difficult for men to come forward, open up, and engage in some form of mental health treatment.” He also stated that “Men also have traditionally shied away from therapy because talking about their feelings is viewed as negative and non-masculine – as going against the expected male image. They are supposed to be invincible, unbreakable super-heroes. Except, they are not. They are only human.”
So, what needs to be done? It is clear that there needs to be more recognition for not just men, but everyone living their lives on the streets. As Louise stated in her interview, we certainly shouldn’t be having a homelessness situation to the extent we do, in the UK, in 2019. There should be more provisions put towards homeless shelters and mental health services. Studies from Homeless Link found that “rough sleepers with psychiatric issues spend longer on the streets, with little or no effective targeted provision from mental health services.”
There are though, some services who are coming up with solutions to both of these issues. Whitfield Street soup kitchen, a homeless shelter in London, is offering a mental health drop-in service for those visiting the shelter. This is the world’s first and is the start of a solution to helping the homeless with their mental health problems. It’s hoped that the service provided will help tackle one of the underlying reason as to why people result in becoming homeless.
But there is still a long way to go. We need to recognise that a specific gender doesn’t define how much help you deserve. At the end of it all, as Fellows said, we’re all human. We all deserve help when we are going through some of the darkest times of our lives. Governments and powerful officials need to be focusing on solutions to put more resources into services that can offer help and aid these people through their struggles. Otherwise, the issue of homelessness and mental, both on their own and combined, will just continue to grow.
