Nathaniel Ayers arrives at the premiere of The Soloist
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
I recently became involved in a community project to develop a plan to increase pathways to employment for the homeless. The initial discussion included defining homeless. The stereotypes abound: drunk on the corner with the sign and his dog, drug addict, mental illness. The realities include a much broader segment of the population like the unemployed mother of three living in a van with her children, the single father lost his job and lives in a tent in the forest with his two children. The employed that will do anything to keep their coworkers and boss from finding out they no longer have a place to live. The folks who don’t consider themselves homeless because they have a friend to stay with but who don’t have access to a place of their own. The veteran suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome whose issues create family problems and the need to flee the home.
And yet, the demographic includes the stereotypical picture of homelessness: the drunk on the corner with his dog, the drug addict, and the mentally ill. NPR featured a story about LA Times columnist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers. Lopez wrote the book about Ayers that the film “The Soloist” is based on. Reading an excerpt from the book demonstrates that the issues of homelessness and mental illness seem inextricably intertwined.
Much of the difficulty comes from the mentally ill shunning contact with the outside world. Often depression occurs which may lead to drug addiction or alcohol abuse to kill the pain of living. For many it’s a never-ending vicious cycle that results in worsening mental health.
An LA Skid Row organization, the LAMP Community, works with the homeless mentally ill. Housing helps mental health. Treatment helps mental health. It’s a complex problem with folks not mentally able to make decisions around treatment and medication and lack of access to appropriate treatment. This is a problem every community faces to some degree, rooted in stigma and fostered by misunderstanding and fear of the illnesses of the human brain.
“And there are thousands of Nathaniel Ayers, too, says Steve Lopez. “I hoped that in humanizing Nathaniel, that it’d be a step toward beginning to de-stigmatize mental illness,” he explains.“
It remains to be seen if “The Soloist” will help communities make that first step toward de-stigmatizing mental illness and facing the issues to begin creating solutions.
No easy task but well worthwhile.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103198515
