THREE NARRATIVES OF HOMELESSNESS DUE TO MENTAL ILLNESS 1

Why People Have Become Homeless

English 1010

Professor:

Heidi Hart

Weber State University

Student:

Garimirka Chaparro
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Why People Have Become Homeless

This article, by David Shohl, Sarah Marsh and Guardian Readers, and Lori Teresa

Yearwood is about three stories of people who fell into a homeless due mental illness.

In the three cases, mental illness is a condition that if left and treated or if you take a

wrong treatment can take you to homelessness. From the stories, you can see, there is a live time

battle. People commonly take the treatment until they feel good, abandoned, and relax

In the first two stories to Shohl and Ryan, talked about how can mental illness can affect a whole

life, how the right treatment can improve the life, and how, if you discontinued, can go down

from a successful life to a homeless life.

However, in the story by Yearwood. Is about a woman who has had many traumatic

events in less than a year, she didn’t receive the right diagnostic, and she didn’t receive the right

treatment. The author’s point is that although mental illness is common for homeless, many

times the homeless is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Institutions are not

staffed with workers capable of correctly diagnosing the illness, and consequently giving them

the right treatment and in many cases making the illness worse.

The Authors shows in these stories, a very common experience for homelessness. They

have a mental illness which they don’t know how to manage, and end up with out at home, they

relay on friends and institutions to find treatments which make then better, start feeling normal

and abandoned the treatment or receive the wrong treatment. And the homeless history starts all

over again.
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Why People Have Become Homeless

In this assignment, I write about why people have become homeless. There are many

reasons. This paper draws mainly on magazines, using narratives. Many narratives say that

people became homeless because of illness, especially mental illness. According to their

arguments, and I agree, mental illness is one condition that can change the life of the people and

they can be homeless for a long time if they don’t get a suitable treatment. I write about three

histories: David Shohl, Caroline Pyne, and a story by Lori Teresa Yearwood.

From the stories, you can see, there is a lifetime battle. People commonly take the treatment until

they feel good, abandon it, and relapse.

David Shohl is a good example of someone experiencing homelessness because of mental

illness, how can mental illness can affect a whole life, how the right treatment can improve the

life, and how, if treatment discontinued, a person can go down from a successful life to a

homeless life.

David Shohl has written his own narrative of his life as a homeless person. (Shohl, 2019).

Everything started when he lost his mother when he only was 8 years’ old and he was diagnosed

with refractory depression (a term used in clinical psychiatry to describe a condition that affects

people with major depressive disorder who not respond adequately to a course of appropriate

antidepressant medication within a certain time) and received electroshock therapy. That is a

physically taxing procedure which weakens memory. He continued to study and he got a music

professional title and started working as a college music professor in Bronxville, N.Y. He felt

comfortable and successful. He stopped the treatment and continued to be okay, but as time
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passed he was fired from his job as his illness started to affect his performance. Sholh was

forced to ask for government help because he couldn’t pay his apartment rent and utilities or buy

his own food. But the government help was not enough to cover all his necessities and he

became homeless. Sholh lives in a Homeless Shelter and they have a psychologist who helps him

with the treatment, and he feels stronger now. He works helping the homeless at the shelter to

find the right places for help, and he has started sending applications to leave the shelter. As I

indicated, Shohl’s whole life was affected by a mental illness, and the right treatment has helped

him be successful. When he abandoned the treatment, he became homeless and when he returned

to the treatment he feels better, and now he is working to leave in the past his life as a homeless

person. (Shohl, 2019).

My second example is about Caroline Ryan. (Marsh and Guardian Readers, 2017). And

again, this example shows that the treatment helps the homeless to have better lives. Ryan was

homeless two times. The first time when she was 23 years old. Her father threw her out, because

she was unmanageable. She went with friends for a while, sleeping on the floor. She couldn’t

stay with friends because she had schizophrenia and her attacks made her feel very

uncomfortable. She had a doctor appointment, and in was at this appointment when she was

desperate and begged to be left in the mental hospital, and they let her stay for six weeks. After

they put her on treatment, she got better, got a job and felt comfortable for a while. She left the

treatment, and the second time she was 30 years old and was out on the street again. She is

finally established and has a good job. (Marsh and Guardian Readers, 2017).
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My last example is a narrative by Lori Teresa Yearwood. (Yearwood, 2019), about a

woman who has had many traumatic events in less than a year. She didn’t receive the right

diagnosis, and she didn’t receive the right treatment. Yearwood does not mention her name. The

author’s point is that although mental illness is common for the homeless, many times the

homeless are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Institutions are not staffed

with workers capable of correctly diagnosing the illness, and consequently giving them the right

treatment and in many cases this makes the illness worse. (Yearwood, 2019).

In Lori’s narrative, she talks about a woman who in less than a year experiences a string

of back luck: her house burnt, her mother died from cancer, her dog died from cancer too, there

was a nasty family battle over an inheritance, and then, finally, she loss of her business and all

her animals because she did not have the money to care for them. In the first year of the woman’s

homelessness, she was assaulted and raped and when the police finally founded her she was very

confused, scared, and in shock, she didn’t know how to respond to the questions. The police

weren’t very concerned about an in-depth investigation. The woman was with the psychiatrists,

but she didn’t have a very good evaluation or diagnosis. She was diagnosed with many mental

illnesses: schizoaffective, bipolar, mania, and paranoia. The woman started with treatment for

each diagnosis. However, she only had post-traumatic stress disorder. In conclusion, although

she was mental ill, psychiatrists and health workers did not treat her for the correct illness in

consequently prolonged her homelessness. (Yearwood, 2019).

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As you can see in the three examples, the people suffered from mental illness, could not

function properly, lost their jobs, couldn’t pay their bills, and ended up homeless. When they

received the right treatment, they recovered. When they abandoned the treatment, they relapsed

and in the last example, the homeless person did not get the right treatment, and they have not

recovered. I think there would be fewer homeless people if they had the right treatment and if the

institutions staffed with trained personnel work capable of better diagnosis.

Bibliography

Shohl, D. (2019) what my journey into homelessness taught me. Brooklyn, N.Y. Yahoo

news. Retrieve from https://news.yahoo.com/what-my-journey-into-homelessness-taught-me-

150045180.html

Marsh, S. and Guardian Readers (2017) How I became homeless: three people’s stories.

Retrieve from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/15/how-i-became-homeless-three-

peoples-stories

Yearwood, L. T. (2019) Trauma in plain sight among homelessness people, PTSD is

widespread and widely overlook. Cases studios, Salt Lake City. Retrieved from

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/homeless-life-ptsd-overlooked.html