A friend of mine has a homeless brother with schizophrenia who refuses housing and rejects gifts from family members as well as their efforts to stay in touch with him. In his paranoia he’s trying to control everything in his life.
For a person with schizophrenia, accepting a gift opens a pathway that the giver can use to travel right inside his head. When he's not worrying about being invaded, he has to worry about how he'll use the thing that was given. Things get out of hand. So do people, and schizophrenia adds an invisible crowd of noisy, unpredictable company to the sufferer's mind, confusing everyday events and filling them with menace. Possessions and companions - both must be kept to the barest minimum. So people with schizophrenia typically live alone and tend to lose things or throw them away.
Fully half of the homeless people drifting around America's public spaces suffer from a serious mental illness.
They don't choose a homeless existence. The gang of thugs that took over their minds has been monitoring their every move - for instance warning them that if they live or work inside a building, their neighbors, or their stuff, will corner them and pounce.
No wonder many homeless people, seeming to "choose" not to work or accept shelter, wander around exposed to physical misery and danger. In this land of the free, people are free to be as miserable as their schizophrenia or other desperate condition can make them. One of my small defenses against despair about all this is to go out for coffee once a week with a person who is isolated because of a chronic mental illness or is socially ghettoized as one of "the homeless."
It's true that some people with schizophrenia reject offers of companionship. If they're not taking meds, a yammering crowd may already be keeping them company inside their heads. But 99% of those in treatment will appreciate having a weekly social hour with someone who isn’t a psychiatrist, social worker, fellow client, or parent (authority issues inevitably complicate the latter relationship). Companionship will also help them believe in the value of holding to their present course and continuing to take their meds, even if the subject of staying in treatment never comes up between the two of you.
A homeless person is a person, too. An hour of being treated every week like a fellow human being does a lot for someone living out there in the cold. Your faithful weekly company over time will help them recover a sense of dignity and possibility that can spark life choices more respectful of the potential that got buried under layers of neglect, abuse, bad decisions, worse luck, or some combination thereof.
Please check out my earlier diaries about Geraldand Hiro, and consider joining me in this freelance volunteer endeavor. My Only Connect: Benjamin diary tells about some ways you can get started. My Get to Know the Real People in Tents has some snapshots of homeless people in Seattle.
Please see the entire diary series on this and related topics. And if you'd rather email me than post a comment here at Kos, write to freestyle.volunteer@earthlink.net.