Lesson 9: Community Mental Health Problems: Environment

Attention

"We earn a living by what we make, we make a life by what we give."

Sir Winston Churchill

Relative poverty. Absolute poverty.

Homelessness.

Hunger. Mental Illness.

They all intersect, and affect community mental health.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

• Discuss the effects of poverty, discrimination, and homelessness on mental health.
  
• Explain how noise "pollution" can lead to mental illness.
  
• Discuss the effects of road rage on mental health.
  
• Analyze the role of mental health professional working with the homeless.
  
• Analyze the link between poverty and mental illness.

Teaching

Reading

• View DVD on reserve in Lunder Library entitled "Homo Toxicus." This is a detailed documentary on the chemical toxic exposure that impact on physical, sensory-perceptual, and potentially mental health.
• See as well "Life's Greatest Miracle," another DVD. This one is on prenatal development. Environmental risks, from poisonous chemicals, to contaminated water supply, to the food chain by way of preservatives, colorings, and by-products of live-stock treated with antibiotics, all impact of physical wellbeing.

Onset of first mentrual cycle for women has been occurring earlier, and earlier over the past 200 years. The food chain, both in terms of quantity, and quality may by at the heart of this. Body mass/fat ratio drives onset of puberty for females. The resultant changing hormone levels affect behavior, identity and body-image. The artificial speeding up of this otherwise naturally occurring event my not be what nature intended. Earlier onset for fertility can result in earlier pregnancy, childbirth, and the cascade of responsibilities that this entails. Under-prepared parents-to-be, and societal response can start the cycle of poverty and adjustment disorder(s). The United States DOES NOT have the best rates for infant survival during the first year of life. On a scale of just thirty countries from best to worst, the U.S. hovers at about 17th down the scale. Premature babies, and low birthweight babies drive infant mortality. Early, earlier in this context is a health, poverty, wellbing risk.

Click HERE to visit the National Alliance to End Homelessness website.

Lecture

Have you ever contemplated living without a "fixed" residence? Living from day-to-day, never knowing where you will have shelter and safety is VERY stressfull. Maslow's hierarchy of needs identifies basic, fundamental needs, then on to higher, meaning needs. Food, shelter, clothing are fundamental.

A few years ago, a student of mine at KVCC told me that she was going to go on a weeked mission with her church to Boston, MA., to work with the homeless in a certain part of the city. She asked me what to expect. I told her better to come back and tell me what occurred. When I next saw her, she didn't look quite right. She reported that it was the worst thing she had ever seen. Nothing would have prepared her for what she witnessed. I told her that what she saw continues after she returned to Maine!! She was devastated by the outreach for the weekend. Imagine, in cities with truly vast wealth, name any you wish, there are people who from day to day, have no food, no water, no shelter, no medical care, and, on, and on. This is real. It exists all over the world. The estimate is that something like 70% of the homeless are mentally ill. The illness routinely is NOT believed to be caused by homelessness, but that mental illness can give rise to the cycle of poverty, homelessness, and at risk activities.

Treatment, release, and relapse. A three-pronged strategy, that does not break the cycle. ENORMOUS societal-environmental problem. Everyone, at least in terms of intention, wants to help here. But, the reality is that the core problems are chronic and systemic. Mental illness frighthens most people not trained to understanding anything about cause and effect here.

If a halfway-house, or sheltered living arrangment is proposed in a given community, everyone agrees that it is needed, but, it shoud be situated someplace else, not in my backyard- N.I.M.B.Y.

Without a sense that we are all our brothers' keepers, it doesn't work. Without a sense community, there cannot be community mental health.

The expression, that you are two rent failures away from homelessness is not idle comment. Two failed mortgage payments can eventuate in the same outcome. Subprime mortgage loans were at the heart of the economic melt-down that hit the financial sector in 2008. It is now 6 years later. What markers for recovery do you see? The partial government shutdown for 16 days on October 2013, affected my wife and I. It also affected some 800,000 federal employees. Lost payroll, although made whole after the shutdown, totalled 1 billion dollars. What you may not know however, is that an additrional 23 billion dollars was wasted on non-recovered expenses for travel, lodging, and meals for government business that had been paid in advance!!! No refunds there.

Follow-the-dollar. A very crude expression. However, transparency and accountability can only happen if we understand how things are funded, and what the priorities are in the first instance. We have a vast disparity socio-economically in the world at large. We also have enormous day-to-day survival challenges to over half the world's population. That is three and one-half billion people, 65 % of which are CHILDREN.

I never do not think about this. There is great pain and suffereing out there.

Assessment

Lesson 9 Quiz

1. Read the local newspaper or search the Internet to identify information about environmental hazards that are common to persons who are mentally ill. Discuss what you discover.
2. Define how the term homelessness is used in different contexts. Issues here are crucial. Life itself can depend on this.

Lesson 9 Discussion

Identify persons in your community who work with the homeless population. Ask them to identify gaps in services. How would/could you address these gaps???