Housing, income support and mental health: Points of disconnection
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BioMed Central
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Housing, income support and mental health: Points of disconnection Cheryl Forchuk*1,2, Katherine Turner3, Libbey Joplin1, Ruth Schofield4, Rick Csiernik5 and Carolyne Gorlick5 Address: 1School of Nursing, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, 2Mental Health Nursing Research Alliance, Lawson Health Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada, 3Community Futures, Industry Canada-FedNor, Canada, 4Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and 5School of Social Work, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada Email: Cheryl Forchuk* - [email protected]; Katherine Turner - [email protected]; Libbey Joplin - [email protected]; Ruth Schofield - [email protected]; Rick Csiernik - [email protected]; Carolyne Gorlick - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 12 December 2007 Health Research Policy and Systems 2007, 5:14
doi:10.1186/1478-4505-5-14
Received: 28 January 2007 Accepted: 12 December 2007
This article is available from: http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/5/1/14 © 2007 Forchuk et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract There exists a disconnection between evolving policies in the policy arenas of mental health, housing, and income support in Canada. One of the complexities associated with analysing the intersection of these policies is that federal, provincial, and municipal level policies are involved. Canada is one of the few developed countries without a national mental health policy and because of the federal policy reforms of the 1970s, the provincial governments now oversee the process of deinstitutionalization from the hospital to the community level. During this same period the availability of affordable housing has decreased as responsibility for social housing has been transfered from the federal government to the provincial and/or municipal levels of government. Canada also stands alone in terms of being a developed nation without national housing policy instead what is considered "affordable" housing is partially dependant upon individuals' personal economic resources. As well, over the past decade rates of income supports have also been reduced. Psychiatric survivors have long been identified as being at risk for homelessness, with the disconnection existing between housing, income and mental health policies and the lack of a national policy in any of these policies areas further contributing to this risk.
Background There exists a well known relationship between the presence of a mental illness and increased rates of poverty and homelessness. However, the exact dynamics of this relationship has remained somewhat unclear especially in the context of present day Ontario. While early
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