Citation

Xu KY, Gold JA, Szlyk HS, Rolin SA, Shields MC. Mo. Med. 2024; 121(1): 14-20.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Missouri State Medical Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

38404439

PMCID

PMC10887459

Abstract

The US media is saturated with coverage of perceived threats to public safety by people experiencing homelessness (PEH) with purported "mental illness." In a prescient 2017 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), then-Los Angeles health commissioner, Mitchell Katz, noted a sense of public "frustration with some of the behaviors of some homeless people," ranging from "sidewalks being blocked by shopping carts, aggressive panhandling, and urination and defecation in public."1 Such sentiments have intensified in recent years, as the number of PEH (Table 1) has surged, with frustration increasingly turning into fear. With regards to media coverage, a series of articles suggested that nearly half of commercial sidewalks in San Francisco were "covered in feces," leading to widespread public outrage.2 Meanwhile, a content analysis of 6,400 tweets regarding PEH collected over three months showed widespread generalizations that PEH posed a high risk of violence and that homelessness was caused by untreated mental illness

Language: en

Keywords

*Ill-Housed Persons; *Mental Disorders/epidemiology; Humans; Violence