Family Homelessness & Children’s Mental Health
 Homeless families in the U.S.
In any one year, 1.4 million children in the U.S. are homeless 1. Data from the National Resources and Training Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness 2 indicate that families make up 40% of the total homeless population. Although it is difficult to obtain accurate data on families that move so frequently, the evidence suggests that this proportion is increasing. Overall, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans are more likely to be homeless than White Americans 3. For many homeless families, other issues such as extreme poverty, trauma, interpersonal violence, mental illness, and substance abuse exacerbate the impact of having no place to live.
How does homelessness impact families?
A safe stable nurturing environment is important for children’s healthy development. Numerous research studies confirm that homelessness harms children’s health and well-being 4. Homeless children:
- are twice as likely to be hungry.
- are more likely to have mental health problems (e.g. anxiety, depression, behavior problems).
- have more frequent acute and chronic physical health problems (e.g. infections, asthma)
- are at high risk of developmental delay and school failure.
Homeless children are also exposed to violence, separation, and other ongoing stressors. Nearly nine out of ten children report that they worry that something bad is going to happen to their family. Data from public schools estimates that they serve 400,000 homeless children a year. Many more children are pre-school age. School-age homeless children often miss school, don’t have access school transport, and change schools frequently.
What mental health services are available for homeless families and children?
Being homeless can make it very difficult for families to access the services they need. Homeless families require comprehensive services 2 and interagency collaboration among service providers 5.
In the city of San Francisco, the Homeless Children’s Mental Health Initiative is working to provide mental health services for children, under 5 years, who live in shelters and in transitional housing. As part of this initiative, mental health consultants work with shelter staff to increase their understanding about young children’s development, and the psychological and emotional issues experienced by homeless children and families.
The National Center on Family Homelessness notes that the U.S. in unique among industrialized nations in having such a high proportion of mothers and children among the total homeless population. Although recent disaster events have focused attention on how homelessness affects families, too often the impact of homelessness on children’s mental health remains invisible.
We invite you to share your experiences and expertise. Below are some suggestions for further discussion.
- What can be done to increase the visibility of the problems experienced by homeless children and families?
- In your experience, how does homelessness affect children’s mental health?
- What services have you found to be helpful for homeless families?
- To what extent can existing services address the needs of homeless families?
- What other prevention and intervention services are necessary?
- How well do practitioners understand the issues related to homelessness?
- What can be done to build the capacity of staff who work with children and families in various settings (e.g. schools, child care, shelters, social and health services)?
Please post your comments. We appreciate your thoughts on this important issue.
As always, we look forward to hearing from you!
Your thoughts…
Comments:
 Thank you for cleaning this board up, this really is important to many of us. No it isn't a brain disease and it doesn't cause one even if a lot of people popularly would feel better believing that rather then doing anything about the real issues of homelessness and poverty.
I don't like the way poverty programs are set up they are set up as jobs that you have to go to, sit there for hours at a time, do other work just in order to get your benefits like getting signatures from family and friends that know your situations. So they don't have any financial privacy and it is ingrained in them.
Then the helpers waste lots of peoples time and efforts that could be better spent finding their real skills and helping them get paid work. Then people never get enough to get out of it, and are put down for being in it. I just think that it is useless, but some people have to have help at times.
No we don't want people to be homeless, and yes that is going to cause a lot of issues and hardships and emotional struggles, changing environments usually does cause stress in most people. Stress is a normal feeling or reaction to what one is dealing with, overload is a reaction to too much stress, and acting out is a way to get that stress out if one over-achieves, under-achieves, goes numb on booze or drugs, or uses it in other ways.
I think most parents that are homeless or what have you don't want things to be that way, but it is unfortunate that not enough is done to increase the hope in the situations rather then to increase the standards and the penalties parents face for what they mostly do to figure out how to get what they really need or take care of their kids.
I dare say how would you like it if you never really had a room that you could call your own and know that you might be there for more then a year or so? Most of you that might read this will maybe never know that you have had a room all of your life and also probably an office of your own too. I know this is an old board and that no one may ever again read it, but it is important to me.
Help yourself and you can help others too, others help others and it helps them too. That is the truth, build hope not fear and emotiona not physical trauma. A poor person is struggling just to survive, you wonder why they don't do what they say they will or can't do what they say they will or would, and then you misjudge them for that.
Things come up from day to day and people have to live, they have to survive. So much of their time is taken and demanded by others that so call want to help or treat them, those who call it a job. And those that are trapped in it have to make sure that those they love survive too and from day to day sometimes that can be the hardest thing in the world. Peace, Janie Posted Wednesday, January 30, 2008 by Janie Lee, M.Ed. at 11:13 AM
Using drugs affects depression more? WBR LeoP Posted Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 04:11 AM
Please remember that the medical community and the scientific community are VERY POLITICAL. WBR LeoP Posted Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 02:21 PM
I have had a hard time going to sleep for almost 3 years now. WBR LeoP Posted Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 12:23 PM
We need love and acceptance and giving and care in our world, once we find these things from the bottom of our hearts, things will get better for all of us. There but for the Grace of God go I! I was there, I got out, now I am here, I don't want to go back. I want to bring everyone out with me. I know the difference now and you all do to if you just try to think about it. Peace to all of you out there. Posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 03:18 PM
Every creature needs to rest. Giraffes, little babies, elephants, dogs, cats, kids, koala bears, grandparents, moms, dads, and hippos in the jungle - they all sleep! Just like eating, sleep is necessary for survival. WBR LeoP Posted Friday, January 19, 2007 at 09:00 AM
Does anyone ever look at these archives? I did not post what I did to bring crap here, it is important! But it is also important not to psychiatrize people just because they are poor. The coercion and force of the psycho-social-court systems must stop, it is wrong and it is hurting to many people. If it is to be made right in any way at all it is going to have to stop first. I am not ashamed to tell you this is what I really think. But posting stuff like a gambling site here and other crap and just letting it stay on here denigrates any thing important that me or any one else might say. Janie Posted Thursday, November 10, 2005 at 06:54 PM
Can you name what kind of education and experience that you want to give them as someone working in the mental health feild? Do you realize that many of these people are ten times as smart as either one of us they are just poor and the real help is not there when they need it or they have to learn to play games and beg to get it? Why can't the real help just be given to them without them being psyciatrized for it?
Yes it is a good way to get your foot in the door to get some more clients to use to get paid I do understand that people have problems, but instead of psychiatrizing them why are we not fixing the problems helping them to become home owners and learning to use their money better, that is not a psychiatrist job that is a financial planners job and life coaches job.
I really am not sure that you are going to get these kind of people to go into the real feilds in the first place, but even if you did what they do is not scientific at all so why would you want to and they would just be there wanting to give them psychiatric medications first thing and that is not going to help. I have recieved some thing interesting this evening I will share it with you all.
Dear Mannette,
In asking (via our phone hook-up of 10/26/05) about psychiatric “disorders”/ “chemical imbalances”/ “diseases”/ “syndromes”/ “illnesses”/ “phenotypes (abnormal)/ abnormalities—“is their a marker?” you indicate, as most everyone still does, that you don’t yet understand, and can’t quite believe, that the “chemical imbalance”/ “disease” lie/fraud of psychiatry (adopted today by most of medicine--neurology, family practice, pediatrics, psychology ) is a total, 100% lie with not an iota/atom of truth to harbor the least doubt about…no doubt at all. It is just that brazen. They come as physicians, sometimes in white coats (as Hitler’s physicians surely did) and they say to everyone: normal is abnormal, black is white, up is down, you-normal are abnormal/diseased/chemical imbalanced…you are a patient…you-normal need treatment/drugs, psychosurgery, brain implants, ECT, total confinement, sensory deprivation. You need our prescriptions—and millions of believers, millions of normals become millions of abnormals the instant/moment/second the “treatments(s)” begin (the poisons absorbed coursing throughout the brain and body, the cingulotomy, albeit at Harvard, for OCD, never a disease, the deep-brain implants, albeit at the Cleveland Clinic, for “depression” said by the last to Surgeon Generals—Satcher and Carmona (current) to be a disease, but not a disease, never proved to be a disease, totally subjective, never will be a disease.
From Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, 25th Edition: marker: A characteristic or factor by which a cell or molecule can be recognized or identified.
Herein the characteristic or factor is a physical (macroscopic, microscopic or chemical) factor, one that can be demonstrated for all to see.
Tumor marker: a substance [fb: chemical]released into the circulation by tumor tissue, whose detection in the serum indicates the presence and specific type of tumor.
Any number of tumors release identifiable hormones into the circulation or abnormal chemicals otherwise that signal a tumor is present. PSA in the instance of a prostate tumor.
Recall the “pathogenesis” (birth & development) of psychiatric disorders/diseases/chemical imbalances: a group of psychologists and psychiatrists meet in the DSM committee of the APA where one or more present and lobby for their very own disorder. Next they vote and if “yea” it goes in the DSM of the moment, where after it is referred to as a disorder, then a disease and the psychiatric researcher soon start doing scans, urine, spinal fluid and blood assays on it just as if it were disease, all of this research doomed to prove nothing, since each is not a disease = objective abnormality, but a aggregation of subjective symptoms (aggregated by vote, consensus in the DSM committee).
Mannette, the above is my ongoing effort to be sure that everyone, especially every victim, understands the crime psychiatry commits. As is clear to you, I am sure, every layperson, all of us patients at one time or another, is a potential victim. Psychiatrists await. And they don’t need an examination room, tools, they don’t need tests.
Below are some excerpts from THE ADHD FRAUD—HOW PSYCHIATRY MAKES “PATIENTS” OF NORMAL CHILDREN, due out shortly www.Trafford.com
“The brain is the organ of adaptation, a wondrous, miraculous thing that changes and evolves with experience, that adjusts to its environment in order to best promote the interests of the individual in whose head it resides. To set a toxic substance loose in the brain of a child where
no disease or abnormality has been found, can only impair this organ and cripple a child’s efforts to adapt and succeed. It is for this reason that the psychopharmacological drugging of normal children is never justifiable. It is for this reason that no adult given true and complete disclosure of the risks and benefits of the treatment
equation should ever want such drugs for themselves. It is because we invariably speak of mental/psychological symptoms in physically, medically normal persons that the very concept of psychopharmacology is doomed never to result in net benefit, but only net harm.”
"The President’s (Bush Jr.) New Freedom Commission on Mental Health recommended:
'Linkage [of screening] with “treatment and supports” including “state-of-the-art treatments” using “specific medications for specific conditions.”
The problem is there is nothing specific about psychiatric conditions. None of them are actual diseases. And yet, for 34 years, from 1970 to the present, the Congress has enacted (and
past presidents have signed) laws assuring the diagnosis and drug
treatment of psychiatric disorders, alleged to be diseases, while never, once, requiring proof that they are. Thus it is that the millions of children said to have ADHD, and all psychiatric disorders, are physically, medically, normal until such time as their “treatment”/ drugging commences. In other words, the lives of millions upon millions of normal children, in the US and around the world, are needlessly, destructively, medicalized in the name of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment.
Clearly, there is a need to immunize all normal children everywhere. Nor is this a scientific debate—there is no science. Nor is it a matter of misstating the safety and efficacy of medications; with no diseases to target they are not “medications” they
are foreign compounds—poisons, each with its greater or lesser potential to harm or kill.”
Psychologist William Pelham of the University at Buffalo urged that parents take a hard look at whether their children really need these medications. He points out that behavioral training programs for children, parents and teachers can lessen the need for drugs or make them unnecessary [www.wings.buffalo.edu/
adhd]. Suggesting that behavioral training might render drugs unnecessary is to suggest that ADHD is a behavioral problem, not a physical-medical abnormality, a disease, which, of course is the fact of the matter.
Mannette, Dr. Pelham sounds like a disaffected insider, maybe one worth interviewing.
Further: “Daniel R Weinberger, MD, Chief of the Clinical Brain Disorders
Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, explained that neuroimaging in the form of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), fMRI (functional- magnetic resonance
imaging), and PET (positron emission tomography)has demonstrated that most major psychiatric disease— depressive disorders and schizophrenia, for example—are associated with “subtle but objectively characterizable
changes” in brain structure and function. “These changes do not establish the diagnosis but do demonstrate the involvement of the brain in these disorders” See McBride,
G. “Neuroimaging Advances Offer New Data on Stroke Detection and the Genetics of Mental Illness,” Neurology
Today (June, 2002): 26-8. Subsequently, I wrote the editor of Neurology Today stating: “Dr. Weinberger must submit for publication in Neurology Today, references for
the claim that “neuroimaging in the form of MRI, fMRI, and PET has demonstrated that most major psychiatric disease—depressive disorders and schizophrenia, for ex-
ample—are associated with “subtle but objectively characterizable changes” in brain structure and function.” If
he is unable to present proof of the “subtle but objectively characterizable changes” in these psychiatric conditions, the editors of should say so and print a retraction.”
Here, Dr. Weinberger, speaking for all of US psychiatry claimed there were “subtle but objectively characterizable changes” without giving references to any such proofs
in the scientific literature. Nor has Neurology Today, its editor, or the American Academy of Neurology (AAN)
retracted these statements."
You should consider interviews with Steven Sharfstein, MD, President, American Psychiatric Association, Daniel Weinberger, MD, National Institute of Mental Health, Thomas Insel, MD, Head of the NIMH, and Surgeon General John Carmona. Also, right there in Manhattan, F.X. Castellanos and Harold Koplewicz at NYU and Peter Jensen (Mr. ADHD) and Lawrence Greenhill at Columbia. All are purveyors of psychiatric "chemical imbalances" as real--as diseases.
Be assured, there is zero legitimacy to psychiatry's claims that even a single DSM psychiatric "disorder"/ "disease"/ "chemical imbalance" is an actual physical abnormality = disease. All of their pateints are medically/physically normal until the drugging starts, as it always does.
Sincerely,
Fred Baughman, MD
my email address is mama_jane_4_2000@yahoo.com for any one that wants me to put you in touch witht his doctor so you can find out if he is a doctor and if this is indeed from him if you doubt me. thanks, Janie
Posted Friday, October 28, 2005 by mama_jane_4_2000@yahoo.com at 08:11 PM
Building capacity, spoken of in the last of the bulleted items above, is about education and experience.
Staff who work with children and families could begin to address that issue with time spent working in agencies that serve homeless families - social and human service agencies, as well as medical and clinical providers.
A specified amount of hours "in the field" would be required each working year. Not only would that be a community service, but learning on the job is generally what is meaningful and what adds to one's knowledge base in a lasting way. Posted Friday, October 28, 2005 by Christine - ctmom05@yahoo.com at 05:20 PM
A home is the place that your family is and where you can lay your head and know you and your heart is safe not a building or a mansion. The federal definition was made so they could serve people supposedly equally, but those the landlords and the people working in it that make a living off of it need to keep it going and don't really think much any more about what is best for any family and the social services adopts these things to use to get kids into systemes and then psychiatrize them through coercion which actually hurts more children then it helps. Homelessness as stated in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Act states that children experiencing homelessness inlcude: sharing the housing of other persons; and what is wrong with that is it a crime? Some times families wouldn't choose to live together, but that mother we were talking about earlier might just do best living with her family if she wanted to and letting them help her, children living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds and I ask does any one realize how bigoted this is against poor people or single mothers trying to go back to school to get an education? Do we realize how many poor people live in these type of accomodations these days? If it is clean and safe and adequate for the weather if they are happy they should be left alone, trailer parks are all the rage for some people these days and many wealthy people choose to camp as recreation although it might not be the best longterm situation for any one, children that are living in emergency or transitional shelters; are abandoned in hospitals; or are awaiting foster care placement; now these are children that need homes and this is an area that we need to work on, except those in foster care unless they are getting ready to leave the foster home through transitioning then they should not need housing or any financial support with that, children and youths who have a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings, this could be a problem depending on what kind of a place it actually was? I know some people that live and work out of their homes in these days that are actually public businesses so should they be helped or removed from their parents for this? Children and youths who are living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations, or similar settings; and these are the children that need to definitely be helped with housing from the government first and foremost and if we spread our finances to thin then it is likely they will be left out which creates the tragic situations that we see. Migratory children who qualify as homeless for the purposes of this subtitle because the children are living in circumstances described in clauses (i) through (iii). It is often these false standards and definitions that cause the problems nt the real situation, if one has a place to bathe, eat, sleep, play, be safe, be loved, and be adequately protected from the weather they should be left alone and should be secondary to those that are really homeless sleeping in dangerous situations and in cars and things like that. What we are doing is trying to get more dollars, but it is helping the ones getting the dollars for doing it and taking the rent far more then it is helping any of the poor. It makes a difference on the rate that can be paid for rent to helping to increase the cost so that poor people can not find it at a price that they can afford, and that is unfair to those that can not afford to pay what the government has been paying and it makes people more dependent on the government and that makes them look like they have mental health problems because they can't take care of them selves which is wrong. We need to rethink who and how and why we are really helping people and do things that help people to help themselves more. Posted Friday, October 28, 2005 at 12:30 PM
One important step toward increasing the visibility of homeless children and families in our communities is understanding who is considered homeless. A good place to start is the federal definition of homelessness as stated in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Act. It states that children experiencing homelessness inlcude:
(i) children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; are abandoned in hospitals; or are awaiting foster care placement;
(ii) children and youths who have a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings (within the meaning of section 103(a)(2)(C));
(iii) children and youths who are living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations, or similar settings; and
(iv) migratory children (as such term is defined in section 1309 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) who qualify as homeless for the purposes of this subtitle because the children are living in circumstances described in clauses (i) through (iii).
This definition describes many of the invisible children who are impacted by homelessness in our communities, and every day many more families are in jeopardy of becoming homeless.
Posted Friday, October 28, 2005 by Mary Dallas Allen, MSW at 08:33 AM
As a psychiatrist I feel I must respond to Ms. Lee's comments as she did a very thorough bashing of my profession. But the irony is that I found myself agreeing with the substance of her comments about homeless families. This IS a social problem and the solutions are primarily social solutions. Our failure to address the core causes of homelessness (i.e. economic factors such as job loss, failures to define the worth of people who can't compete in the high tech world, a host of practical issues such as transportation, and inadequate housing stock. I particularly liked her comments on our definitions of "adequate housing" being an ideal that is simply out of cinque with the practial experience of poor families throughout human history and the realities of 3rd world life.
I agree with her that the failure to address primary and practical social issues leads to "blaming the victim" and a rush to define them as somehow impaired and needing to be "fixed." Sadly there are some in my profession who, without thinking, may be used as tools of social control and providing unwise, unneeded and even hurtful medication interventinos. That said, it is entirely to simplistic, and an indulgence that is NOT helpful, to demonize psychiatry as if it is some coherent evil force that seeks to psychiatrize all social problems. That part of her comments simply need to be temporized with a bit of an explanation.
I define myself as a community psychiatrist. (I was president of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists for 4 years in the late 90's - check out their website for a great exposition of socially responsible and humane documents) As such I am particularly interested in the social and community factors that impinge on people and cause emotional distress. I am also interested in the fate of people who have well defined psychiatric illnesses who have their conditions aggravated by social conditions, including homelessness. Community psychiatrists are passionate advocates for improved social conditions and while we realize that tragically some very disturbed individuals may need to be forced into care due to a real potential for harm to themselves or others, based on a mental illness, we seek to create conditions, even for the most severely mentally ill in our communities where they have collaborative and humane care. Empowering those with mental illness through the recovery movement directly helps some of the parents of homeless families. The AACP is an early champion of such empowerment and has a great piece on the AACP website on Recovery Oriented Services.
Psychiatrists like me know we have something to offer families who are tragically dislocated, either by disasters such as Katrina, or by atrocious social policy that is inhumane and assigns a large swath of our population to poverty and many indignities. In either case the stresses of life may lead to trauma based mental health problems. Most of these are best treated with addressing safetly issues first and then an informed and relevant form of counseling and the use of some tehcniques, mostly developed by psychologists, to give an individual coping skills. Some may find that medications may help in the process of coping with severe stress. It has been the failure of my profession that we over emphasize the medication aspect of care and that so many of us are only able to apply that aspect of psychiatric services. But as a profession we should have been trained in comprehensive assessment and treatment. Psychiatry as a profession and a scientifically grounded medical speciality holds the value of a true biopsychosocial approach to human difficulties. We know that many homeless individuals are amazingly resilient and need only some practical social supports. We know that many are subject to becoming lost in substance abuse and dependency. We know there are very effective means of addressing such problems and seek to ally with the field of substance use disorder treatment. We know that anxiety and depression are common in the population of families who are homeless and both medical and psychosocial interventions are absolutely necessary (but not sufficient in the absense of safety and social supports) for getting out of the homeless condition. Trauma CAN and often DOES lead to psychiatric illness; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder happens to more then soldiers on the battle field. A homeless mom raped on the street may have such a result. To ignore this is unconscionable and to not offer her treatment (often the case) is a social failure. Failure to address the fact that preexisting psychiatric illness or substance use disorders may lead to homelessness, even entire families being homeless, is as much a travesty as imposing some forced treatment, especially court ordered medication treatment, when the problems of a homeless indivual have been misassessed.
These are all very scientifically grounded concepts and practices despite Ms. Lees cynical view of psychiatry. I hope Ms. Lee doesn't fall into the trap of denying the presence of mental illness as Tom Cruise would have us believe. That is the perspective that is totally unscientific and ill informed and sadly could lead to many homeless families not getting a part of the care that they need. I would hope that all who are concerned about hte fate of children and their families who fall into homelessness would both ally with your natural partners in community psychiatry. I would hope that all who read these columns would continue to demand that mental health programs and their attached psychiatric services are relevant, adequately funded and practice humane care. When they don't I would hope that you address the problems in partnership with your natural allies in psychiatry and the other mental health professions. Posted Thursday, October 27, 2005 by Charles Huffine, MD at 09:49 AM
I have never been homeless nor have my children so I will not pretend to know exactly how a child feels moving from place to place, shelter to borrowed bedroom corner.
However, in my years as a mental health worker with children and families in this situation, I found that sometimes the simplest things help the most: the shelters that provide a car, a teddy bear, a doll which a child can KEEP. So many children, especially those from homes with domestic violence, had to leave suddenly, with no opportunity to take along treasured items like toys. And this leaves a child feeling unanchored, without a tactile object for comfort.
Secondly, professionals working with homeless children would do well to educate teachers, principals, and others about the anxiety that attends homelessness for children. In the education world, this is often mistaken for ADD and ADHD when the child is simply exhibiting reasonable anxiety over a difficult situation.
Posted Thursday, October 27, 2005 by Kaye J. Exo, MSW at 09:04 AM
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