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[溫哥華本地新聞] At Home: Study shows people are healthier and use crisis
At Home: Study shows people are healthier and use crisis services less after getting a home
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Home+Study+shows+people+healthier+crisis+services+less+after+getting+home/7624585/story.html#ixzz2DcoCksZw
For decades, Anne Newman went to bed every night not knowing if her youngest son Cameron, who is profoundly deaf and has schizophrenia, was safe and warm.
But for the past two years, she has fallen asleep knowing he was in his own apartment, with outreach workers monitoring his remarkable transformation from a chronically homeless man with untreated mental illness.
“It is truly a miracle,” Newman said. “He has gone from homeless and scaring everyone to bits ... (to) he now has a part-time job and is holding down a little apartment in the West End.”
The astounding change in Cameron began after his worried family fought to have him committed under the Mental Health Act. His psychiatrist later recommended he apply to enter the national At Home/Chez Soi study, which is examining how best to help homeless, mentally ill people.
After entering the study in 2011, he was given an apartment and provided with outreach workers and support services.
Until then, Cameron, 48, had spent much of his life in turmoil.
As a teenager, he went “totally out of control” after discovering drugs and alcohol, Newman said. The large, tight-knit family did not realize he had a mental illness until he was diagnosed in his 20s.
As an adult, Cameron became a paranoid man with a deep, guttural voice (caused by the deafness) who drank too much, was often arrested by police and made irrational statements triggered by his schizophrenia.
Today, he is taking medication, so his thoughts are more rational. He has a part-time job as a janitor. He quit drinking and smoking. And he obeys the law.
“This has given Cameron a new life, a total new life,” Newman said. “It is so heartwarming.”
The national, $110-million three-year study, funded by the federal government and overseen by the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), is examining whether people like Cameron can stabilize if they are given a home first, and then support services.
Preliminary data from the first half of the study indicates the participants are leading healthier lives and rely much less on expensive crisis services, such as jails and emergency rooms.
The data also suggests the money spent on housing and supporting the participants may be a better use of taxpayers’ money.
But funding for the three-year study expires March 2013, and it is unclear what will happen to the 300 people who received homes as part of the $30-million Vancouver arm of the study.
The MHCC is negotiating with the federal government to, at the very least, extend the rent payments for those 300 people, possibly for as long as two years. That would allow academic researchers time to analyze all the data and present evidence that this model should be expanded to help other homeless people with mental illnesses.
The federal government has not confirmed whether it will extend funding beyond March 2013, but says it is working on a “transition plan” for the participants.
If Ottawa provides no additional cash, the provincial government has promised no one will be sent back to the street and that some medical services will be made available to the participants.
But with just four months to go before the study ends, details are scarce.
If there was a poster child for this study, it might be Emily Grant.
When she became a participant in November 2009, she was coming off a four-year bout of depression, homelessness and drug use. |
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發表於 2012-11-29 07:15
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