Homelessness: The “mentally ill” excuse

In nearly every analysis of the causes of homelessness, “the mentally ill excuse” is trotted out. According to it, some unknown but significant percentage of homeless people are “mentally ill” and, therefore, any approach to “solving” homelessness must include treatment for mental illness.

Such demands hopelessly complicate the discussion. As if the problems of building massive quantities of free or low-cost housing aren’t difficult enough, now we’re told we need to provide medical/psychological help to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of mentally ill homeless people in California. This means, of course, paying for doctors, psychologists, nurses, medications, support staff, treatment centers and longterm care in many cases, as well as an army of bureaucrats and civil servants to sustain what would be in effect another Medicare program of massive size and expense. And all that would be on the backs of—who else?--taxpayers.

When I think about the financial burden that would impose on us, it makes me sick. But what does “mentally ill” mean? The term has been dumbed-down so much that nowadays almost everyone can be found suffering from some kind of “disorder.” The following list, which is only a very partial one, comes from the “bible” of mental illnesses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, 947 pages that purport to be “a guide in the diagnosis of mental disorders.” 

bipolar disorder I and II; cyclothymic disorder; substance/medication-induced disorder; disruptive mood dysregulation disorder; major or persistent depressive disorder; attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; various anxiety disorders (separation, panic, obsessive-compulsive, eating, trauma, social); phobias (agoraphobia, for example); body dysmorphic disorder; hoarding disorder; hair-picking and skin-picking disorders; post-traumatic stress disorder; acute stress disorder; dissociative identity disorder; depersonalization/derealization disorder

Of course, some of these truly represent mental illness. But do you know what we used to call most of these people? “Disorderly,” as in sociopathic, disruptive, rebellious: as in “drunk and disorderly.” Typically, throughout human history these people were shunned, shamed or otherwise subject to various societal morés. I’m not suggesting that we return to the old days of tarring-and-feathering miscreants. But there was a certain sensibility back then, when societies instinctively recognized that people had to conform to well-thought-out and long-established modes of behavior, or else suffer the consequences.

Somewhere along the way the notion of compassion entered the picture, so that nowadays homeless advocates accuse us of lacking compassion. Political leaders have hopped onboard that train: even as they get tough on encampments (as San Francisco has), Mayor London Breed insists San Francisco remains “a compassionate city,” a linguistic absurdity since it’s impossible to “compassionately” roust homeless people from their encampments. But if we redefine “disorderly” from being a mental illness to disrespectful, rebellious behavior, we can begin to approach the homeless problem from a place that actually offers solutions.

We have, in this country, come to “medicalize” aberrant behavior. “Over the last several decades, these conditions have come to be defined and treated as medical problems. They've been ‘medicalized’", argues a study out of Brandeis University, referring to conditions such as ADHD that are now perceived as medical conditions. And, of course, every medical condition needs medications to treat it and doctors that specialize in it. This is why the Brandeis study calls medicalizing human conditions “a growth industry.” The pharmaceutical companies get rich off ADHD and all the other “disorders”; the drugs you constantly see advertised on T.V. and in popular magazines to treat them are churned out every time a new “disorder” is identified. Enormous pressure is then put on physicians to prescribe the drugs patients see on direct-to-consumer commercials. What we might refer to as the “medical-pharmaceutical complex” has arisen, with all its might and persuasive power, to convince us that we need drugs and doctors to heal these “disorders.”

Why is there so much more mental illness today than in the past? Is it because experts have identified so many more disorders and diseases? Is it because the woke left has seized control of so many social sciences at the university level, including departments of psychology? Whose interests are served when so many Americans are diagnostically disordered?

There’s a reason progressives love the medical-pharmaceutical complex: it helps them sell their brand. If no one is responsible for their actions, then we need progressive politicians to be in loco parentis for us all. This is why Pamela Price insists that criminals aren’t really thugs, they’re just “our babies” who happen to be mentally ill. This is why Carroll Fife is pro-encampment: the homeless suffer from mental conditions, and need our love and support, not to mention our money. (I’d like to get the American Psychiatric Association to put a new disorder into the DSM: “lying politician disorder.”) Above all, medicalizing everything makes everything something else’s fault: it’s never the person who’s responsible for his actions, it’s a “disorder.” All this adds a third party to the “medical-pharmaceutical complex.” Now it’s the “medical-pharmaceutical-racial grievance complex,” and it has become a national security threat.

Steve Heimoff