‘Housing is important in rehabilitating mentally ill people’
The Hindu
Recovery, rehabilitation better at home than in institutional care: experts
The importance of shifting the approach from institutional care towards providing housing to mentally ill persons for better recovery and rehabilitation was stressed by the panelists who spoke at the Sundram Fasteners Lecture Series on ‘Preventing homelessness among persons with severe mental health issues.’
Speaking on the second day of the lecture series on Sunday, Deborah K. Padgett, Professor of Social Work, Public Health and Psychiatry, New York University, termed the approach of putting the mentally ill in shelters as a “stair case approach” where they kept falling down the stairs as the dropout from shelters was very high.
Citing her research, she said that providing permanent housing clearly showed better outcomes for mentally ill persons than shelters, provided they received adequate support services. She acknowledged the challenges in implementing such an approach, particularly in the global south that already struggled to provide affordable housing to low-income and the homeless people.