As inflations and other factors occur across the world, they cause frictions in a lot of households, in form of high costs of living meeting unsustainable salaries… While things eventually balance up, some people sadly get affected by the heavy blows… This includes anxiety, depression, deteriorated health, the inability to meet up with housing rent and other essential expenses.
What this does to some people is force them to take up the habit of abusing drugs in order to cope. This habit, if not checked, combined with the lack, can send victims into homelessness.
Two categories of unhoused persons will be discussed. The first is sequel to the previous paragraphs. First, some hobos, even before they become homeless, already have mental complications. Secondly, some other rough sleepers’ mental health degenerates only after becoming homeless.
Experts say homelessness is a consequence and cause of mental sickness and substance abuse. This sentence summarizes the foregoing paragraph.
Let’s now focus on the second category of people without housing. These people lose their homes when they can no longer meet up with the payment of their housing leases, and, of course, when they don’t have a safety net.
In homelessness, life is unimaginably horrific. It’s adverse, deplorable and hellish. Many of them are unemployed and don’t get enough money. Hence, they, unbelievably, sleep on empty stomach sometimes. No wonder they rummage through waste for food and other items. The situation, marked by stark lack, also means some homeless people defecate in the open, get water a mile away, are exposed to harsh climatic conditions such as extreme cold, storm or heat, et cetera. As a result, people experiencing homelessness usually look scraggy and rough, and sometimes smell badly.
Study shows that a good portion of them live with chronic health issues, as they don’t have access to medical care. The horror of not having a home is unimaginable and unspeakable. Is it any wonder that they have low life expectancy, sadly dying in the streets by the thousands?
Further, most homeless women and girls, including older women, get sexually assaulted. There’s also survival sex which is hardly avoidable for women and girls. As for the homeless men, they get physically assaulted, which could also be fatal. Summarily, they get preyed on, over their vulnerability.
Further still, rather than get support, some homeless individuals generally get stigmatized, looked down on, genuinely avoided, spat at and/or mildly to viciously assaulted by some people in society. A lot of them are anxious and panicky about human attacks at night, and thus, sleep in fear, every night. For this reason, some hobos resort to substance consumption and abuse, just to cope with the adversity of homelessness. In 2017, the National Coalition for the Homeless found that 26% of hobos in the US depended on substances.
Ultimately, the sheer adversity of homelessness and drug abuse, separately or collectively, are causing homeless people to lose their humanity and minds. In other words, a good deal of them, who, erstwhile, were mentally well, are developing mental health issues, in homelessness. A study conducted in the US showed that 30% of the country’s chronically homeless people have mental health conditions.
Whether they’re losing their humanity or minds, the adversity of homelessness can make victims do desperate or despicable things. Hence, the general public should watch, in the protection of themselves and of unhoused people, many of whom are victims of circumstances. This homelessness advisory is creating awareness on homelessness, in a bid to attract succour to the unhoused. They need human help.
