From my point of view I see some things differently. I get frustrated on how homeless people are viewed and treated. Friends of mine make comments like, 'get a job' and treat them like they are beneath them.
The city I live in has a lot of homeless people I'm ashamed to say. One day thought about this asking the question why. I had to do a little research. Most homeless people have mental disabilities. They may look well and able on the out side to you but there is a lot of other issues going on that disable them from keeping a job and living within our society. Some people see them begging on the street and all they think is, 'they want to get money to buy drugs and alcohol.' Well, that's true! It's self medication and often the only way people survive. If you want, buy them food.
Many view abusing drugs will give you a mental disorder and that may be the case for some but most of the time if some one is abusing, it's the symptom. It's hard in this society, mental disorders are shuned and the symptoms are not common knowledge so it's difficult to know if you have a problem. It's so hard to find help and when you do it may take a while for you to feel better. Drugs have an immediate fix.
You'll never understand how close you are to those look down upon until it's happened to you. Most people live pay check to pay check. A few bad months..... a mental break down... and that's you on the side walk. It pretty much happened to me and thank God I had family that was able to take care of me and support me.
Some one said to me the other day after I shared my views, 'most of them don't want help.' I got so mad. First of all, there is no actual real help out there and how would you know what help is when you have never seen your world any different. My city shut down our main mental institute and the homeless population rose tremendously. I didn't know what normal was until I got help. Mental disorder is a different mental state.
I think it's important for people to be aware of these issues for a number of reasons. Treat every one like a human because you'll never know how one smile or nice word will affect some one. Being empathetic towards a person, making them feel as if you look at them with no judgement can do a world of good. Knowledge about this can be golden. If some one gets help early on it's very easy to treat and a lot less painful. It's like cancer, if you catch it in the early stages you have more options on treatment and a greater survival rate.
