Mental Health Housing And Accommodation Support Initiative

One of the biggest contributors for poor healthcare is the stigma against mental health. This stigma allows healthcare providers to view those with a mental illness as having low relevance, thus creating disinclination towards providing adequate resources and/or care. This negative stance, based on misinformation and prejudice creates those that have a mental illness to lose their self confidence. Because of this loss, people with mental illness decide not to contribute to their health or livelihood. In the past fifty years, many advances have been made in mental healthcare. However, with the attached stigma, many people choose to not seek out treatment.

The Mental Health Services Act is a monumental proposition that has helped many people for more than a decade. In California alone, close to 1.2 million adults and around 422,000 children live with a serious mental illness (State 2010). Without the proper treatment, suicide is the leading cause of death for a person battling an untreated mental illness (State 2010). With over thirteen billion dollars raised so far, MHSA has been the root of funding for mental health in California (Williams 2015). MHSA is still a work in progress. The act is nowhere near perfect, as a recent audit has shown, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Apart from medical technology and medications, the housing treatment has played a great role in improving the treatment of mental illness since the early 1990s. First and foremost, in the past the patients of mental illness were treated as prisoners by being isolated in hospitals or asylums but now they are treated as normal human beings with great care and respect. Secondly, in the past the patients stayed in the hospitals for long periods of time, whereas nowadays patients stay in their home community for most treatments. Only in severe cases, such as violent patients or those who cause harm to themselves may be required to stay in hospitals or more intense observation. Another form of housing treatment is community treatment in which the patients are treated in a friendly way while in

In 2009, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) gave the United States national mental health care system a ‘D.’ This grade is based on four sections: “health promotion and measurement; financing and core treatment/recovery service; consumer and family empowerment; [and] community integration and social inclusion.” While New Jersey received a grade of a ‘C’, which is better then the national average it is still a dismal grade that needs improvement.

One of the most vulnerable populations frequently encountered by everyday individuals are the mentally ill. Mental illness is not a condition that manifests physically, but can cause a person to change their physical appearance due to specific behaviors. It is not uncommon for a large number of the homeless population to possess one kind of mental illness that contributed to their housing condition. This population may partake in at risk behavior, jeopardizing their long-term health, and reducing their life expectancy. The mentally ill are an underserved population that can be hard to reach, physically and mentally. Their illness comes with shame due to the stigma attached to the illness and due to the lack of education. Nurses are now trying

Mental health providers utilize many forms of research from the interventions that they use to provide care to their clients all the way to the assessment’s that they use to gauge the level of satisfaction of their clients with their services and how effective their services are in regards to their overall mental health wellness.

The mentally ill have many struggles to face. Most notable is the lack of a job. People who have mental illnesses are more likely to become homeless because their disability may make it hard for them to keep a job. Mentally ill homeless people are also more likely to be attacked or assaulted. Having a mental illness makes you susceptible to chronic homelessness, which is when an individual has “experienced homelessness for at least a year– or repeatedly – while struggling with a disabling condition such as a serious mental illness, substance use disorder, or physical disability.”(Donovan, 13) There are over 202,291 american citizens who are suffering from chronic homelessness.

Living Well action 3.5.5 requires all government agencies or community managed mental health organisations proving services to people with a mental illness to respond to the individual aspirations of clients to access education, training and employment. This is especially important in terms of the positive impact that employment can have on a person’s ability to maintain tenancy.

The HCC convened in an effort to identify the strengths, and challenges of Mental Health Services currently being provided, and to help increase the provision and quality of these services in the community. Several community stakeholders from various agencies and organizations attended, including faith based organizations, attorneys, and local government officials.

Without appropriate support, people with mental illness can be excluded from stable housing & social & community participation. Transitional models of support for people with acute mental illness have addressed clinical symptoms & hospitalization, but they have not facilitated stable housing & community integration. In contrast, individualized housing models aim to improve mental health, housing & community

Contracted providers, health plan, behavioral health agencies, specialist, primary care physician (PCP), specialists, peer support agencies, hospitals, residential facilities are resources contributing to operating program. These programs provide a variety of service activities to meet member needs such as therapeutic interventions, inpatient stays, residential facility for medication stabilization, peer support, living skills, health promotion, coordination between clinical providers for ongoing care. Positive outcome results when member engages, receives appropriate support, services and resources. Health and wellness increase, decrease in hospitalizations, increase in lifespan, increase in services, increase in coordination of care between all providers involved in members treatment, and overall cost savings for health plan and integrated health plan

When working in social service, the idea is to help those in need with various programs and or services. In the Social service field one of the main issues you may come across is housing. Supportive Housing has become a part of the solution when connecting clients with their permanent need. Supportive housing is a combination of affordable housing and support services designed to help individuals and families use housing as a platform for health and recovery following a period of homelessness, hospitalization or incarceration or for youth aging out of foster care. (Housing Services, 2016) Originally supportive housing was conceived as an intervention for homeless people living

Other cities are demonstrating that it is possible to have adequate, stable and affordable housing for mental health patients. Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, NY is building an apartment building for mental health patients and members of the community. Patients can live there and continue treatment at the hospital. Since the apartments are open to the community as well, the patients will have a sense of normalcy and further break down any stigmas. Community advocates, patients and medical professionals working together made this a reality. (Hobbs,

Return to Community: Build Support Systems for People with Psychiatric Disabilities by Paul Carling, explores broad and practical techniques to help people with serious mental illnesses transition back into society. The term used for the transition for people with mental illnesses is "community integration". Carling assesses what current and past approaches have done to meet the needs of people with psychiatric disabilities and how the past research has not been sufficient. The author redefines what we think of people who are mentally ill by giving sources from families, survivors, and even medical companies. He explains that it is not just the family and friends of people with psychiatric disabilities that need to help integration, but the community in which the patient lives needs to step up to help. Carling explains ways in which we can change societies attitude or arrogance on mental illnesses to help others transition back into civilization.

The Bethel House was, “founded in the town of Urakawa in 1984 to help people with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia live in the community after being discharged from the long-term psychiatric ward of the Urakawa Red Cross Hospital,” (Nakamura, 2013, P.1). The Bethel House, although originally created to assist those with severe mental illnesses, has grown into a community that provides a nonjudgmental and supportive atmosphere. This atmosphere encourages the residents to share their experiences and allows each one to flourish and learn from others new coping techniques and other strategies to cope with living with