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I found my father living on the street

bbc.co.uk

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Re: I found my father living on the street

#21

Post by girvo »

onion2k wrote: post #17
SpaghettiCat wrote: post #6

What kind of society lets a mentally ill man roam the streets, deteriorating, instead of institutionalising him and helping him recover?

Many mentally ill people are still in a position where they can still make decisions for themselves, but their illness means that they choose things that are ostensibly bad for them eg refusing help to get off the streets, help with addiction, stopping them committing suicide, etc. That means society has to decide between forcing people to do things against their will or respecting their decision even though it's wha…

> * alcohol (which is a depressant)*

I thought a depressant in the context of drugs means "central nervous system depressant", not "causes depression"?

Re: I found my father living on the street

#22

Post by stan_rogers »

girvo wrote: post #21
onion2k wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many mentally ill people are still in a position where they can still make decisions for themselves, but their illness means that they choose things that are ostensibly bad for them eg refusing help to get off the streets, help with addiction, stopping them committing suicide, etc. That means society has to decide between forcing people to do things against their will or respecting their decision even though it's wha…

> * alcohol (which is a depressant)* I thought a depressant in the context of drugs means "central nervous system depressant", not "causes depression"?

... and alcohol is a CNS depressant. A common "can't afford to smell of booze right now" substitute (at least in the old days; it's been a very long time between drinks for me) was Seconal. It ain't the same, but it takes the edge off in the right way.

Re: I found my father living on the street

#24

Post by Symbiote »

skrebbel wrote: post #18
huuu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you would be amazed and ashamed. In the USA it's estimated that one third of the homeless people suffer a serious mental illness. I live in the Netherlands and I think the numbers are the same here. Ofcourse there is help but most homeless people move around a lot so it can be difficult to track them and help them. Also: having worked with homeless people I know for sure they will get some kind of menta…

I always had the idea that homelessness numbers were way higher in the US than in the Netherlands. This helped keep me firmly on my high horse (I'm Dutch too). Was I wrong?

According to [1], the Netherlands has about 0.16% homeless people per capita, and the USA 0.50-1.10%. (If I'm comparing figures correctly, since that page has "counted on one night" and "total for the year" for different countries.)

It's probably significant that a lot of the US is a lot warmer year-round.

[1] https://www.homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics/#eu...

Re: I found my father living on the street

#25

Post by rfrey »

skrebbel wrote: post #18
huuu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you would be amazed and ashamed. In the USA it's estimated that one third of the homeless people suffer a serious mental illness. I live in the Netherlands and I think the numbers are the same here. Ofcourse there is help but most homeless people move around a lot so it can be difficult to track them and help them. Also: having worked with homeless people I know for sure they will get some kind of menta…

I always had the idea that homelessness numbers were way higher in the US than in the Netherlands. This helped keep me firmly on my high horse (I'm Dutch too). Was I wrong?

Apparently there are about 27,000 homeless in the Netherlands[1], out of a population of 15.5 million, so 1,742 homeless per million people.

In the USA there are apparently 633,782 homeless [2] per night out of 319 million people, or 1,987 per million people.

But that's heavily influenced by the way homeless people are counted. The US number is explicitly the number of people homeless on any given night. Estimates of the number of people in the US that will be homeless for some period each year ranges from 2.3 - 3.5 million [3] (7,210 and 10,972 per million resp.) This is estimated from shelter occupancy.

I couldn't figure out if the Dutch statistics agency were counting number of people homeless in a year, or number on any particular night, but [4] hints to me that they're estimating the annual population, so I think the best comparison is:

Netherlands: ~1,700 homeless per million USA: 9,000 +/- 2000 homeless per million

[1] http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/bevolking/publicaties/ar...

[2] https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2012AHAR_PI...

[3] http://www.familyhomelessness.org/media/306.pdf

[4] http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/methoden/toelichtingen/alfabet/...

Re: I found my father living on the street

#26

Post by empressplay »

nekgrim wrote: post #2

Beautiful story. Not very relative to HN I think, but it's good to see the world throught other points of view, sometimes. Thanks for this post.

Anxiety and depression are pretty common in the entrepreneur crowd -- these conditions can drive a desire to find independence, some relevance and self-worth.

What makes the entrepreneur different from the homeless person is simply a fighting spirit, but sometimes even those with the spirit give up. I guess the point is, we're all people, and we should all get the same help and respect, whether we're the power-driven entrepreneur or the homeless person who just can't deal with it anymore.

Re: I found my father living on the street

#27

Post by Sparq »

skrebbel wrote: post #18
huuu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you would be amazed and ashamed. In the USA it's estimated that one third of the homeless people suffer a serious mental illness. I live in the Netherlands and I think the numbers are the same here. Ofcourse there is help but most homeless people move around a lot so it can be difficult to track them and help them. Also: having worked with homeless people I know for sure they will get some kind of menta…

I always had the idea that homelessness numbers were way higher in the US than in the Netherlands. This helped keep me firmly on my high horse (I'm Dutch too). Was I wrong?

I think GP means the percentage of homeless people that have a mental illness is similar to the US, not the percentage homeless compared to the total population.

Re: I found my father living on the street

#28

Post by empressplay »

onion2k wrote: post #17
SpaghettiCat wrote: post #6

What kind of society lets a mentally ill man roam the streets, deteriorating, instead of institutionalising him and helping him recover?

Many mentally ill people are still in a position where they can still make decisions for themselves, but their illness means that they choose things that are ostensibly bad for them eg refusing help to get off the streets, help with addiction, stopping them committing suicide, etc. That means society has to decide between forcing people to do things against their will or respecting their decision even though it's wha…

In fact, the absolute worst thing you can do with someone whose still "fighting" is to institutionalise them. Once you label and stigmatise them that way, they tend to give up fighting, and whatever benefit they were to society, even in a limited capacity, is then lost.

You want them to keep fighting.

Re: I found my father living on the street

#30

Post by nikolay »

DominikR wrote: post #15
SpaghettiCat wrote: post #6

What kind of society lets a mentally ill man roam the streets, deteriorating, instead of institutionalising him and helping him recover?

Mentally ill persons enjoy the same rights that other citizens enjoy and have their own free will. As long as a person didn't commit any crime and is no risk to society or oneself you cannot institutionalize him or her. In any case I would refrain from making such broad generalizations about a society. Some societies prefer strong individual rights and others prefer a strong state that tells them what to do.

I doubled a mentally ill person has anything resembling "free will"...
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