A Window on Homelessness

Mental Illness and Psychosis can Lead to Homelessness

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

People talk and I’ve overheard it. Folks say that those living on the street are to blame for their circumstances. It’s their own fault.

If I can add anything to the dialogue about this, I will try. Having schizoaffective disorder, I can provide a small window into the homelessness I experienced.

I have only been homeless a few times and everytime was the result of my illness.

My illness put me on the street.

It wasn’t because I didn’t have money or a support network to see me through tough times. My homelessness was the exact result of being paranoid and delusional.

I can share with you that I was homeless because I was so very paranoid.

There have been times where I have thought the water in my bathroom was irradiated and thus not safe. There have been times where I was convinced that my bed sheets had been sprayed with a pesticide and again not safe. There have been times where nothing could be eaten from my kitchen because I believed my enemy had poisoned the food.

I could go on and on.

Could you live in a house where the water was irradiated, the food in the kitchen contained methamphetamine, and the bedroom sheets were sprayed with an insect pesticide?

The answer is no. NO ONE could live there.

Granted, the honest reality is that none of those things actually happened to my apartment.

In my mind though, all those things were true.

I remember telling a therapist once how I even wiped my eyes with my bed sheet to demonstrate to myself that the sheets were covered with pesticide. The logic being that my eyes would sting if there had actually been poison on the sheets.

My exercise only convinced me that there was some problem other than a pesticide.

I can’t speak to the entire homelessness problem in this country. I can only speak to my own experience with homelessness and my mental illness.

When I couldn’t safely live in my apartment due to “poisonings”, I lived in my car. When the car was no longer safe, I was relegated to shelter on the street.

I can’t say I have extensive experience of living on the street. I will however share that it was my psychosis that led to the problem for me.

What is the exact moment in which I could no longer be considered housed? That’s a difficult question.

In my illness, I can share that I generally always had money for housing. That wasn’t the source of the blame. My problem was that I became so disorganized and paranoid that I couldn’t keep life together.

Schizophrenia means literally, “split mind”.

My mind was split and my behaviors were split. I couldn’t keep my life together.

That is my small insight into the homeless problem in this country. When you can’t keep your life together, living on the street becomes an actual option.

I am so very fortunate to have an excellent support network in my family. They have always been there for me to ensure that I get hospitalized and medicated.

Without that support, there is no telling where I would be. I would probably be in a jail or institution or dead.