Fadzai Chikwava, Melissa O’Donnell, Anna Ferrante, Eduwin Pakpahan and Reinie Cordier “ Patterns of homelessness and housing instability and the relationship with mental health disorders among young people transitioning from out-of-home care “  PLoS ONE(Vol. 17, Issue 9)

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0274196


Summary

Homelessness is an issue worldwide but especially in Australia. Homelessness services increased from 279,200 in 2015/2016 to almost 290,500 in 2019/2020. 57% are under the age of 35. The reason why the rate of homeless people is so high is due to poor transition planning from the government department and lack of suitable housing options. Another major reason why many young people are homeless is due to mental health disorder up to 75% is based on alcohol and drug abuse. Young people with persistent periods of homelessness have a higher rate of mental health disorders then young people who have recent or single episodes of homelessness. Some mental health disorders range from alcohol , drug use , depression , anxiety and self injury.

Analysis 

Mental health plays a huge role in justifying how stable you can live. And you don’t know how important it is to take care of your mental health until it’s too late and one is too blindsided to accept help. Now you have reached the downfall and are now living in the streets. And that goes for the majority of people that are homeless. Many people are out there struggling with drug use , alcohol and depression. Many homeless people use this as a coping mechanism with what they’re struggling with but what they don’t realize is that it’s just making their situation worse and the government does very little to help those individuals.