Housing helps mentally ill, study says

People with mental illness are often capable of working to solve their own problems once they’ve been helped into safe, clean housing, a Canadawide study has shown.

The study is subsidizing housing for 1,000 people in five cities and comparing their lives over four years with 1,000 who don’t receive the help.

“They’re looking at the best ways of helping Canada’s most vulnerable population. The Housing First philosophy is finally getting it right,” Louise Bradley, president of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, said this week.

The commission is almost halfway through its 10-year mandate to transform Canadians’ attitudes toward mental illness and improve services and support.

It will release a national interim report this summer and roll it out across the country, drawing attention in each province to the local efforts and implications.

The Housing First philosophy rethinks the traditional model of addressing homelessness among people with mental illness, which first treated the illness, getting the patients ready to go into the community and then finding a place for them to live.

Workers were often surprised and disappointed when the individuals were back in the hospital a few months later.

All participants have at least one serious mental disorder, about onethird are women and nearly all were unemployed at the outset.

Most had at least one physical condition, which has drawn attention to the strong correlation between chronic disease and mental illness, Bradley said.

More than one-third had involvement with the criminal justice system in the year before entering the project.