June 11, 2024
Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry looked at the prevalence of mental illness among people experiencing homelessness.
“We were looking at the prevalence of addiction and mental health disorders (AMH) in adults who have experienced homelessness globally,” said study author Rebecca Barry, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. “We wanted to look at the overall current and lifetime prevalence of AMH disorders in this population.”
The research team suspected that the prevalence of AMH among homeless people may be higher than in the general population, but they didn’t know to what extent.
“As homelessness increases in Canada and many other countries, it is increasingly important to understand the health consequences associated with homelessness,” Barry said. “We extracted results from previously published studies and combined these results using a meta-analysis.”
The researchers found that the current prevalence of AMH among people who had experienced homelessness was 67% and the lifetime prevalence was 77%, with the lifetime prevalence being higher in men (86%) than women (69%).
“I was surprised by the high overall prevalence of AMH, and also by the high prevalence of some individual diagnoses,” Barry said. “I think this paper shows the seriousness of the problem, but more research is needed into why the prevalence of AMH is higher in homeless people.”
Barry believes that further research investigating the mediators and moderators of this association, as well as the direction of this association, may help identify modifiable risk factors.
“Addressing this issue requires a social determinants of health perspective that includes social, economic and political factors,” Barry said. “As we argue in our paper, there are several successful interventions that have improved housing retention, and perhaps some of these interventions could be applied more broadly.”
About the Author
Patricia Tomasi
Patricia Tomasi is a mother, maternal mental health advocate, journalist and speaker. She is a regular contributor to Huffington Post Canada and focuses primarily on maternal mental health after suffering from severe postpartum anxiety twice. Her Huffington Post biography can be found here. Patricia is also a patient expert advisor for the North American based Maternal Mental Health Research Collective and founder of the Facebook Postpartum Depression and Anxiety Support Group, an online peer support group with over 1,500 members worldwide. Blog: www.patriciatomasiblog.wordpress.com
Email: tomasi.patricia@gmail.com