You ever seen someone end up with schizophrenia after becoming homeless for economic reasons without displaying prior prodromal symptoms? I never have, but seen the opposite about 500 times.
I think lately for schizophrenia the emphasis has been on the “2nd” hit being early life/childhood (or during the pregnancy) with main exception of heavy exposure to THC being a reliable later in life risk.
You definitely see the later in life post-divorce psychosis especially in women but seems lot of those cases would be better explained by delusional disorder than schizophrenia. Or that the “hit” was actually changes in estrogen rather than the divorce.
Yeah I just don’t think its useful to write articles discounting mental health/addiction contributions to homelessness as most the general population reads that article and says “ah yes the homeless people just need to work harder so they can pay rent like I do”. Even thought that obviously not what the author is advocating.
I think the better PR angle is that housing is an important way to provide treatment to folks suffering with severe mental illness. The conclusion that we need housing is the same. But I think society more willing to help sick people than poor people as a whole
I don’t think those are the primary contributing factors at all though, and I don’t think that was the message of the article. Like the subset of people you encounter in the ER or in a downtown area are not indicative of the homeless population at large at all.
most mentally ill people are not going to be put in housing and be like “well FUCK IT I’m going OUTSIDE!”
it’s a lack of housing. that’s the only point of the article. if people want to blame mental illness for everything then they need to do a little more to provide treatment for it, because even in the ER docs will quickly wave stuff away (even legitimate stuff) as just mental illness and then no one really treats that either or they get 1 month supply of a psych med after an extremely brief evaluation and no way to refill it and that’s it.
Like you said it’s because # homeless and # homeless sleeping on streets are two different statistics but I don’t think that was separated out well.
Like hypothetically say some city got a huge windfall and started housing every single homeless person in a super nice shelter you could have a massively high homeless rate as per HUD definition anyone in the shelter is homeless but have zero street homeless
That’s a large part of the challenge. Vast majority of folks with severe mental illness live happily with family friends/parents/siblings/cousins/etc or in residential care homes. So for that to not be the the case there most be some substantially dangerous/disruptive behaviors happening and if you stick them in an apartment their neighbors are going to be just as distressed by whatever led the family to cut them off
ETA- forgot to mention prison, lot of them live in prison too which obviously is problematic
And again I really am just irritated about article downplaying mental health/addiction which by its own stats impact like 30-50% of homeless folks with one or the other
It’s way, way higher rates for severe and persistent mental illness in homeless population than overall. That stat isn’t including common psychiatric conditions like generalized anxiety, ADHD, insomnia, PTSD, etc.
Generally It’s just schizophrenia, bipolar, major depression(controversial and I think depends on the stat) and borderline personality disorder. I’m not entirely sure what dx went into the article #z
Without the genetic risk (and for a man, being older than 30) I wouldn’t expect any of these people to develop schizophrenia, regardless of the stress experienced. So I agree that a blanket statement like “homelessness can cause schizophrenia” is silly, although it sounds like the current thinking remains that it’s not simply random variance that determines why someone with strong genetic risks will or will not develop schizophrenia.
But the thinking shifted more to very early life stuff is the the stuff that carries the majority the risk. Low birth weight, viral illness in pregnancies, childhood in an urban environment, obstetrical complications, childhood nutrition, early trauma, childhood poverty, etc.
So someone becoming homeless for economic reasons at 25 not going to be expected to carry significant risk
ETA - with adolescent THC being the big “later” life risk
How big is this risk? I see a lot of righties railing against legalizing weed with the dumbest of arguments. I haven’t heard this one from them. Granted, I haven’t been listening fully. It certainly seems better than any argument that they are currently making.
Although there are many risk factors associated with schizophrenia, in this study, researchers sought to estimate the proportion of all schizophrenia cases that may be attributed to cannabis use disorder specifically, across sex and age groups at the population level. The study team estimated that 15% of cases of schizophrenia among men aged 16-49 may have been avoided in 2021 by preventing cannabis use disorder, in contrast to 4% among women aged 16-49. For young men aged 21-30, they estimated that the proportion of preventable cases of schizophrenia related to cannabis use disorder may be as high as 30%.
ETA obviously this just one study but giving idea of the size of effects they considering
I offhand don’t have an evidence based answer on specific THC doses, would need to look into it more
That study was based on meeting use disorder criteria which really measures consequences as opposed to quantity/frequency of use.
Anecdotally we see a lot of 7 day a week MJ users who end up psychotic and get better when they quit but research showing good bit of those folks end up with schizophrenia, obviously the causation/correlation questions are there but that a well known consideration for all these researchers
Thanks. This is something I’m not looking forward to navigating with my own kids. I’m very pro legal weed. I just really don’t want them to use it. Or if they must, not until maybe their late 20s.
That’s gonna be a challenge, since they seem to want to do the opposite of everything I tell them. At least they listen to Mom. Neither of us use it, but I’m not sure if that is going to help or hurt our case.
Yeah I think it’s a real struggle these days given how strong a lot of stuff is. Especially when you can even in many no MJ states walk into a shop and get high potency delta8 products it’s a complete different situation than when current parents were growing up smoking OG weed occasionally.