ROOF Blog

The mental health problems faced by rough sleepers has reached a ‘critical level’ following a rise in the homelessness rate, St Mungo’s has found. Among its clients, 40 per cent were diagnosed with depression and 22 per cent were diagnosed with schizophrenia, which St Mungo’s called ‘the tip of the iceberg’. It warned that the government’s target to end homelessness in London by 2012 will be missed unless the link between mental health and homelessness is broken. There has been a 15 per cent rise in the homelessness rate in London in the past year – the equivalent of five new rough sleepers a day.

Mental health charities warn that banks provide little support for customers with mental health issues, and in some cases exacerbate their conditions by treating debtors insensitively and selling them unsuitable products. A government thinktank Foresight suggests that debt collection agencies often ‘deliberately produce fear, anxiety and mental stress’ for debtors, and creditors needed to make stricter assessments to determine which borrowers are in a position to meet their financial obligations.

St Mungo’s is seeking youth workers’ views on mental health and homelessness for a report. It said the proportion of homeless people with mental health problems remain static, at around a third, despite a reduction in the number of street homeless in the past decade, and warned the government would fail to hit its target of no rough sleepers by 2012 if it didn’t focus more on the link between mental health and homelessness.

According to a report from the Fabian Society due out on Friday, millions of people have been condemned to live under ‘social apartheid’ by the previous 30 years of poor housing policies. Successive governments have pushed poorer people into ‘social concentration camps’ set away from private housing, jobs and shops. Children on the estates are more likely to be unemployed, suffer mental health problems and die younger than those in private housing.

A landmark report published yesterday has found that too many offenders with mental health problems and learning disabilities are ending up in prison without access to the appropriate treatment. The report by former home office minister Lord Bradley said that many offenders with mental health problems would be better off serving community sentences instead of jail time, which would reduce reoffending rates and save millions of pounds. He has made a series of more than 80 recommendations calling for improvements in policing, courts and prisons, which ministers pledged to implement.

The government will fail in its target to end rough sleeping by 2012 if it continues to ignore services for homeless people with mental health problems, Crisis and St Mungo’s warned today. A survey for St Mungo’s disclosed that as many as 85 per cent of rough sleepers were in poor mental health. Women, refugees and asylum seekers, the BME community and those who mistreat drugs and alcohol are particularly affected.

According to a report by the Prince’s Trust, a significant number of young people are depressed or struggling to cope, and the situation is likely to worsen as the recession takes hold. One in 10 16- to 25-year-olds felt that life was meaningless, and more than a quarter said they were always or often depressed, while almost half said they were regularly stressed. Young people not in work, training or education were worst affected the research found.