Essay on Offering a Preventive Activity for a Mentally Ill Homeless Person

Offering a preventive activity for a mentally ill homeless person can be quite easy but developing an effective community-based prevention strategy is quite difficult. Such a precautionary measure needs to offer an effective measure and make it efficient. These effective steps should be capable of stopping a person from becoming homeless, which is the primary prevention or terminating homelessness that is our secondary prevention measure. Inefficiency has been the common failure for our local prevention strategies. Homelessness is a very detrimental condition both for the people affect and for the society (Burt, Pearson, & Montgomery, 2015).

The Emergency Solutions Grants Program (ESG) offers capital to engage displaced persons and families staying on the street; progress the number and value of alternative temporary housings for homeless individuals and families. Help run these shelters; offer essential amenities to shelter occupants; quickly re-house displaced peoples; and inhibit families and individuals from becoming homeless (Health and human services, 2017). Medications for Mental Health Treatment; these treatments offered to mentally ill people with severe mental illness or maintainable mental health in the country. An example of these medications includes; Antipsychotic medication, anti-anxiety medications among others  (Dual Diagnosis, 2017).

Efficacy: Medication for mentally heal people has been a temporary solution for people who have severe mental illness. Mentally ill patients who voluntarily receive these outpatient treatments in the community might however stop the medication; which occurs occasionally or they may halt the medication when they feel better or other might develop a fear of the drugs. Therefore making this approach faulty because most of those under medication are not closely monitored to follow their medication strictly. A few months later, they have the same breakdown and back to the hospital again or jailed due to disorderly conducts, therefore creating a revolving door scenario. On the other hand, the emergency solutions grants solve a very limited problem in this huge issue that has become a phenomenon. Temporary shelters will just provide a temporary solution from the big pictures. What these people need is a permanent residence, and then medication can follow. They want a place to call home, and a means of earning an income.

Selection: Policy decisions decades ago that shut down many mental institutions, the loss of jobs and declining wages that help people obtain and keep their housing, the widening income gap, availability of very cheap drugs in the streets like crack cocaine, veterans who lack adequate support has resulted in exaggerating this issue. Eradicating mentally ill homeless people in the society effective measures should be put in place to solve the above issues (Maceri, 2014).

Lack of resources is not the huge problem here, what is needed is a fully integrated comprehensive service system that looks at all of the different complex needs of homeless people and uses the resources in a targeted way to meet those needs, It is impossible to make a permanent change with a holistic change. Creating a community where these mentally ill people can call their home and proper medications, especially targeting the youth who are mostly affected by both drugs abuse and mental illness. Empowering the young people can lead to a reduction of homelessness in the long term not offering temporary services that increase the problem rather than reduce it.

These mentally ill people need a safe and secure place to live, a place they can afford, structures and meaningful activities they can engage in every day, they need gainful employment and a source of income, relationships with family, friends, coworkers and neighbors. They need social connections to contribute to their communities. They also need to make personal decisions about their lives and humanely treatments with dignity and respect.

Ethics: One of the core reasons why the rate of longer-term mental health service advancement is usually deficient is the absence of co-ordination amongst health facilities and services delivered by other sectors, particularly the social sphere. A consistent coordination, and sometimes cooperative funding and managing of health and social care services are essential to handle the common challenges mental condition systems are experiencing currently.

Mentally ill patients on the other side some do not agree with the fact that they are mentally ill, especially the extreme cases. Therefore, they need close monitoring so that they can follow up with the medication and recovery process. The government and all the involved institutions like the health care system and the criminal justice. The government has to be included in the long-term solution by eradicating the current problem of substituting health care centers for jail. Sending these people to jail and then a few days later they are back on the street do not solve the problem.

The community at large needs to appreciate these people and treat them as normal people and not criminals with mental problems. It is proven that absorbing these people back into the community helps greatly into healing them of their mental condition. In addition, the employee should tolerate them in their workplaces and not discriminate them because of their conditions.

Implementation Plan

A huge number of these community-based interventions have concentrated on creating empowering methods and constructing a sense of possession and social duty within community members. A good example is the Communities that Care (CTC) Programme. (World Health Organization,). Serving people in their resident improves their recovery time rather than the institutional setting. Designing community-based services created to with the intention of mental health recovery is vital. It eradicates segregation and solitude, reduces hospitalization rates and the rate of health and life inequality (Touchstone, 2017). Besides, the community residence, there is also a development of homeless shelters that harbor these people and provide treatment, monitoring, and rehabilitation. These two implementation works cohesively to restore these individuals back to the community.

Narrative: mentally ill people need to return to the community and interact with them in their day-to-day life. Create a relationship with people close to them and get mental support to from them. They need to be reemployed and given certain community obligations that they can contribute in. Those who have severe mental health conditions will be accommodated into the homeless shelters and be monitors closely after their recovery they can returned to the community where they will integrate with the rest of the people.

This initiative involves the government, the healthcare, justice system ant the community as a whole. The personnel is mostly psychiatrist, the police, activist and all the people who will be directly in contact with these people. The huge population targeted are the youth who are mostly affected by substance abuse, and they are mentally ill therefore doubling the problem, Families that lives in the streets due to the hard economy and energetic people. The elderly can be taken into the nursing home; the reason for targeting young people is that they are the change of tomorrow. If they are empowered, their children will not end up in the streets. The length of time will depend on the mental condition of the people. It can range from three months to a year or so. Those treated will get permanent residence and a way to earn an income and sustain them. It will be a continuous process, not a short-term process. Some organizations are already exercising this although they need to integrate and work together, the unity will improve the implementation. The criminal justice system and the health sector cooperate with the nonprofit organizations and other areas that are currently implementing this strategic approach.

Training: training will range from the community as a whole to the health sectors and criminal justice system. Many training programs offered to the families of the related victim, on how to deal with them in such situations and making sure that they follow their medications strictly even when they think they feel better. The community will be sensitized about the situation and how they can stop viewing these people as criminal but rather victims who needs affection and love, and how they can help in the recovery. The police officers need extensive training on how to deal with the situation whenever there is an emergency instead of victimizing them. Lastly, there is a huge need for increased personnel in this sector; the limited number is a huge problem in helping these people.

Assessment: severe mental conditions need periodic evaluation until recovery before they release them to the communities. Once every month, assessment to evaluate their progress conducted and if there are loopholes, they seal before it is too late like how deinstitutionalization created chaos instead of helping during its implementation. If a person released into the community, and their condition is still not stable, they should be returned to the shelters or hospitals until they are stable.

Ethics: For any project to succeed all persons must be accountable. Therefore, there must be guidelines that one should strictly adhere to. Those involved should be in a position to help and understand the conditions of these victims and assist them in without discrimination even if it compromises their morally, it is all for a greater good; whether in churches, schools, workplaces or in the community activities.

Conclusion

The huge problem in implementing this proposal is bringing together all the involved parties to cooperate and play their part responsibility. The government has the mandate to create a policy that unites these parties. Say for instance integration all the institution in this way; if the police arrest a homeless mentally ill person, the police take him to the hospital for treatment and then the hospital directs them to the homeless shelter for monitoring after treatments. The shelter them directs that person to the institutions that assign permanent residence to these people. Finally, the community absorbs that person in and treats them as a family; they get a job, a house and an environment that thrive. What will then prevent these people from permanently recovering from their condition? This proposal is a substitute of the revolving door syndrome that the government has been employing for years.

Bibliography

Burt, M. R., Pearson, C. L., & Montgomery, A. E. (2015). STRATEGIES for Preventing Homelessness. Office of Policy Development and Research.

Dual Diagnosis. (2017). Medications for Mental Health Treatment. Retrieved May 8, 2017, from Dual Diagnosis: http://www.dualdiagnosis.org/mental-health-and-addiction/medications/

Health and human services. (2017). For Emergency Solutions Grant Grantees. Retrieved may 8, 2017, from Health and Human services: https://www.ncdhhs.gov/assistance/low-income-services/emergency-housing-and-shelters-for-the-homeless

Maceri, J. (2014, July 3). Can homelessness be solved?: John Maceri at TEDxUCLA. Retrieved May 8, 2017, from TEDx tALKS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eCROJkVc54

Touchstone. (2017). A Holistic Approach to Recovery. Retrieved May 8, 2017, from Mental Health: https://www.touchstonemh.org/about/impact/

World Health Organization, (n.d.). EFFECTIVE INTERVENTIONS AND POLICY OPTIONS. Prevention of Mental Disorders, 26.