Mental Health and Homelessness

Abstract

This chapter presents the clinician’s view of homelessness and related mental health issues based on the experiences of a mental health outreach team (the “team”), which operates in the shelters, the meal programs, and the jail of a high-density homeless area in a coastal suburb of Los Angeles County. The beach cities of Santa Monica and Venice differ from downtown Los Angeles’s skid row, New York’s Harlem, and Boston’s “combat zone” in that they are largely residential areas, are easily accessible by bus from downtown, border on the Pacific Ocean, and contain many public parks.¹ Violence is less than in downtown skid row, but there are fewer shelters and social service facilities.