The Homeless and Schizophrenia

Good day, Corinna. I appreciate readers who make their views known. This community is a caring community, and in my experience, very willing to learn. The purpose of my post was to make it clear that we do need to treat the homeless with respect, and start by meeting their first need, that of shelter and safety. I live in a community that is just starting to do that, and we have had to endure many deaths of our homeless to get to our modest start. During my research, about a third of our homeless population in the U.S. are there because of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I always cite the research I used, and am always open to reviewing new information. 

Jane is right on when she asks you what it is you want. The trauma community is well aware that prevention of trauma infliction is the best course, but as one working in this field since 2008, change is exceedingly slow. If you are interested in sharing your perspective, it can join the small, but growing voice, advocating for policy change in this arena.

Thanks for participating and we look forward to more information from you about your passion. 

What do you need, Corinna? It would be great if there was some reporting out of Alternatives 2016 that we could post on ACEsConnection.

This blog post, in a nutshell, is the disease model view that badly needs new language. As long as you call us "schizophrenics," you're not going to get truma messaging taken seriously. If we have trama experiences, it's not an ilness called "schizophrenia," it's trauma.

Just ask those of us who recovered what we want. Google "Alternatives 2016." Our national conference is going on now. Ask US what we need, instead of asking for a new paradigm with both feet in the old one.

Thank you for telling us about your family, Heather. It's so great that you and your kids are able to talk about their dad's illness. I think educating youth about ACEs science will allow them to develop a language to talk about what is shared, common, and normal, so that it is no longer secret and shameful.

Our whole ACEs Connection Network team believes that prevention is an integral part of any health plan, Bob!

I did not see any 'Prevention' issues addressed in one of the Presidential candidate's "Comprehensive" Mental Health Plan, recently put forth. I think the issue of "Prevention" should be an integral part of any "Comprehensive" Mental Health Plan. I'm curious if any other ACEsConnection members concur.

This topic resonates deeply.

Raising children who have a father who is both homeless and schizophrenic, I have watched the love, heartache and fear as they tried to figure out how to maintain a relationship with their father, and also allow themselves to be 'healthy' and grow-up 'independent' of him and his history and illness. One of the facts I have repeatedly returned to again and again in supporting/building my children's 'toolboxes' as they confronted fears of 'what if someday I have schizophrenia like Dad?' is recognizing that their father's childhood was beyond severe, and for unknown reasons, he was unable to recover from it. That this in itself, creates examination of family history vs genetics. 

The hardest part throughout, remains that there is no 'language' for youth to talk about their fears when they have a parent who is mentally ill and homeless. The private isolation can stack on its-self. Schools are afraid, uninformed and bewildered if you mention it. Medical and therapy fields rely on built-in labels which enforce stigma and fear, the 'illness' seen before the person, making it hard to seek and obtain lasting resources for support, both for the individual and for the family. Family and friends can't understand the daily challenge and decisions that come with each day. To name/identify the complex  plethora of feelings, and not succumb to the weight, takes constant re-set of awareness and flexibility. That my kids and I can talk about our family challenges straight-on...this ability took us a long time to figure out how to do, as there was no 'model' for it.

Understanding ACE's has been, in all my research, truthfully, the most instrumental. For the first time, as a parent, I feel like I can articulate clearer what I was striving to explain to my children their whole lives. That they are going to be better than simply 'okey.' They will live fully and resiliently.

I have a peer, who was given the diagnosis of Schizophrenia, as an adult....who described witnessing his alcoholic father taking out a pistol, in the hallway, when he came to [unannounced visit]  [? domestic violence/restraining order?] the rest of the household on Christmas eve, and [his father] shooting himself, when my peer was only eight years old. He also described experiencing an injury, and applying a tourniquet, to himself, at age 12-having learned it in Boy Scouts, as well as experiencing a severe fall and head injury where the bleeding required his mother to have a family doctor come to the house to stitch a scalp wound, without anesthesia. He also described having the friend who had taught him how to apply the tourniquet in Boy Scouts, later being electrocuted on a power line-which my peer also witnessed.

A former neighbor of my peer, who had witnessed his father abusing his mother, during his childhood, had once commented to me, what an abusive man his father had been.

After 12 years in 'stable housing', in visual proximity to the power line where my peer had watched his friend die of electrocution, he finally accepted his mental health case manager's guidance to move, and began another portion of his life addressing homelessness. He recently [after about three years] moved into a new apartment in another state, just a few miles from here, two months ago. His three year period of homelessness was the subject of a number of front page articles in our local newspaper. I probably do not know, or immediately recall, just how many other ACEs he may also have experienced.