One of the challenges here as an ex-paramedic in the PNW who has certainly seen their fair share of homeless is that several of the more prominent studies use HUD's definition of "severe mental illness" that is far more conservative than you or I would expect...

"Requiring hospitalization more than once a month, on multiple occasions in a year".

And that number, per HUD, is 22%.

If you want to look at "untreated mental illness" in the homeless, now you're above 50%.

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jakefromstatecs 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> If you want to look at "untreated mental illness" in the homeless, now you're above 50%.

But "untreated mental illness" isn't the same as "mental illness that requires institutionalization" which is what the OP is saying.

Additionally, a lot of mental illnesses can be reasonably managed with proper medication, and in my mind very, very few actually require institutionalization. But we as a country can't even get behind the idea of universal healthcare for non-homeless let alone homeless people. Somehow institutionalizing them seems more feasible or reasonable than just covering their medical care?.. I don't get it.

	▲	FireBeyond 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's true, and it blows my mind that that's the first or even high on the list of "ways we can help with this". I do think there's a Venn diagram around severely mentally ill and untreated mentally ill that might require more intensive care. There's also the complexity that drug use and abuse is a method to cope with the emotional pain of homelessness (as one of my instructors said, "if my existence was reduced to fishing rained-on food out of trash, brushing cigarette ash off of it, sleeping and shitting in alleyways, often without something to effectively wipe with, you better believe I'd be on a fast path to taking some drugs to numb that"), or for "self-medication" of said untreated mental illness.