Working with the Homeless: The Psychiatric Resident's Experience

Abstract

The latter years of the twentieth century have witnessed a phenomenon unparalleled since the depression of the 1930's. Legions of homeless, disadvantaged, often mentally ill poor have emerged thronging cities, crowding public places and presenting perplexing complex, social, political, economic, and medical/psychiatric service delivery issues ( I ). Counting the homeless, and among them the mentally ill homeless, is a task fraught with difficulty, as some studies have illustrated (2 ,3). Estimates of mental illness among the nation's homeless range from 10% to 70% (4). In the District of Columbia, there are an estimated six to seven thousand homeless. Of these, in 1988, 36% were felt to be mentally ill (5).