Homelessness Of The Ozarks And Its Effect On Mental Illness

Homelessness in the Ozarks and its Effect on Mental Illness in Older Adults Landon Green Missouri State University Homelessness In the Ozarks: Then to Now The issue my team chose to research and tackle was homelessness in the Ozarks. Specifically, we wanted to look at the demographics of the issue and then ultimately we wanted to look into the effects the issue of homelessness is having on another serious issue, mental illness, and vice versa. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines homelessness as one having no home or permanent place of residence. It defines mental illness as any of a broad range of medical conditions that are marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, or emotions to impair normal psychological functioning and cause marked distress or disability and that are typically associated with a disruption in normal thinking, feeling, mood, behavior, interpersonal interactions, or daily functioning. Some of the examples of mental illnesses given by Merriam-Webster are major depression, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or panic disorder. The main asp ects of the issue that will be covered are the current status of the issue, the causes, current organizations involved in finding solutions, and what more needs to be done. Looking at the status of homelessness from the past to the present, we can see that there has been a drastic increase in the percentage of homeless. In a 2013 Statewide Homelessness Study