More evidence of link between housing problems and mental illness

The Legal Services Research Centre (LSRC) has found "significant associations between housing rights problems and mental illness".(1)
 
By further analysing the responses to the England and Wales Civil and Society Justice survey (between July 2006 and March 2007), they found that:

• 26% of respondents with a mental illness reported a housing rights problem, compared with 11% of respondents without a mental illness.
• "homelessness problems were around ten times as likely to be reported by those with a mental illness"
• respondents who had reported both a mental health illness and long-term illness or disability were three times as likely to report a housing rights problems compared to those reporting no illness or disability.
• 55% of respondents aged between 25 and 34 years old who reported a mental illness and long-term illness or disability reported a housing rights problem.

 
The LSRC warn that their research is limited by the fact that they did not employ a standard mental health index to identify mental illness. Instead, they relied on self-reporting by respondents. However, they note that 72% of respondents who reported mental illness also reported having obtained medical treatment as a result, which indicates that their mental health problems would "generally have been of a kind that would have been medically recognised".
 
Having described these findings, the LSRC conclude that "The findings above . . . provide compelling evidence that housing rights problems are not only associated with mental illness, but may have a role in bringing about and exacerbating mental illness."
 

 
(1) Pascoe Pleasence and Nigel Balmer, Mental health and the experience of housing problems involving rights, People, Place & Policy Online (2007)