Mental health is a problem that everyone has to confront. These days, we live fast and anxious lives, and at this moment, we are more open to talking about mental problems than at any moment in history.

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The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community. It is an integral component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in. Mental health is a basic human right”. With all these characteristics we can see that mental health is needed for every person to have welfare, and also personal, community and socio-economic development. But, if all of us can have a problem with mental health, what happens to the people at risk of social exclusion, the more vulnerable ones?

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One of the most vulnerable groups and with more predisposition to social exclusion are the homeless people. Not having access to a house or living in poor conditions has consequences in many aspects of people’s lives. On the one hand, it unbalances psychic and emotional stability, due to the lack of rootedness. The uncertainty of not knowing where to sleep and if the basic needs can be covered, causes high levels of anxiety.

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The main reason for being in a street situation occurs when they face these conditions, and also the person is in an irregular situation within the country, not having a support network in the country of residence. In addition, it is very common to appear diseases due to cold, humidity, lack of hygiene, etc. All this can lead to a series of disorders that sometimes include the abuse of alcohol and other substances.

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On the other hand, people in these situations have to endure high social stigmatization, which makes it even more difficult for them to enter the labor market or any of the basic areas of the individual. Several studies have shown that people who find themselves in a situation of residential exclusion have reduced their average life expectancy by 20 years compared with the rest of the population. Also, they present between two and 50 times more physical health problems than the population in general. For example, in Spain, various studies on mental health among homeless people place the rate of schizophrenia between 4 and 13% and that of major depression between 2 and 20%.

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In the case of homeless people with mental illness, the problem becomes graver because access in private health units is not affordable, while the waiting lists in the public health system are very long and the appointments very far. All of these characteristics are risk factors for mental illness.

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Also, the number of homeless people is more important in the big cities, also more in the countries with more poverty and with more unemployed people. We can take for example Athens, and study a little about the situation with the homeless people in the capital of Greece. Austerity measures and the ongoing fiscal crisis have significantly spurred the rise in homelessness in Greece in this century, and we can see that is been dominantly concentrated in the city of Athens. The UNHRC reports that in Greece “there are 21,216 cases of people who live, in various forms, outside the home”. NGOs estimate that there are 15,000 homeless people in the Attica region.

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To sum up, the social policy about the homeless in Greece remains under-examined. For example, the first organized counting for homeless people took place in May 2018. There have been efforts to assist homeless people by the government or NGOs, but it’s not enough. Thus, we can see that there are many people without homes that can also have, or will develop eventually, some type of mental issues. We have to focus on that problem, search for ways to help these two problematic situations together.

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Works cited:

  • Fundación INTRAS. (2021). Memoria del Centro integrado para personas sin hogar de 2021.
  • Mental health. (2022, 17 June). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-strengthening-our-response
  • Wikipedia contributors. (2022, 27 mayo). Homelessness in Greece. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Greece
  • Homeless in Greece (2017) https://www.feantsa.org/download/greece-20172928673074328238317.pdf