Sacramento Homeless blog

Stanford anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann tried to understand something that was incongruous in Chicago — and is surely, too, a big problem in Homeless World Sacramento: People who are psychotic often refuse a diagnosis of mental illness and thus forgo benefits they could receive. A review, in The Wilson Quarterly tells us, from her forthcoming book Down and Out in Chicago , that Ms. Luhrmann "planted herself in the homeless shelters and drop-in centers of a tiny, two-to-three-block area with probably 'the densest concentration of persons with serious psychotic disorder in the entire state of Illinois.'" One person Luhrmann met was Zaney, a woman who "insisted she was not crazy despite the fact that she heard 'angry but nonexistent' voices. When Luhrmann suggested several times that she just 'pretend' to be crazy in order to get an apartment, Zaney would shake her head. 'I'm not that kind of person, she'd say.' " The boo...

I am increasingly concerned, and am hearing that others' concerns are increasing, about a lack of help for mentally ill people in Homeless World Sacramento. There is a feeling that all the public agencies and nonprofits are shirking responsibility to help those who suffer most and are most in need of help. The state and county are in trouble and it is known that services they provide or fund to help poor or mentally-ill people have been among the first to be severely cut or ended in response to the budget crisis. Advocates for the mentally ill and families that include a mentally ill member are not politically powerful. Schizophrenic people, and others enduring other types of mental illness, can seem to be placid, and even serene, which masks their suffering. I have heard that there is a man who now frequents Friendship Park who has been institutionalized for causing fires and is now acting oddly and is likely off his medication. He needs help, but there is none forthcoming. ...

"Disabilities and dysfunction process from having been shunned and denied access to needed opportunitites and networks of support." ~ the brothers Lysaker in Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self What is schizophrenia? How many are homeless Sacramentans? Perhaps 15% of the Sacramento homeless population suffers from schizophrenia. The percentage is difficult to determine for many reasons that branch from both the fuzzy definition of the malady and that many people within the homeless community who have the illness (1) are in denial and are undiagnosed and (2) have the illness as a diagnosis only – the disability can be faked by people who are successful claimants of social security and other benefits. What is schizophrenia? One webspace gives us this definition : The most chronic and disabling of the severe mental disorders. Typically develops in the late teens or early twenties. The overt symptoms are hallucinations (hearing voices, seeing visions), delusions (false beliefs...