Chapter 8- Treating Homeless Clients with Co-occurring Disorders

Introduction:

Helping Homeless Individuals with Co-occurring Disorders: The Four Components by An-Pyng Sun is about homeless individuals experiencing co-occurring disorders (CODs) and how to effectively provide treatment to these clients while also decreasing their homelessness. Individuals with CODs are more likely to experience homelessness and so it is important to understand and learn the most effective means for treating clients experiencing this (Sun, 2012).

Article Summary:

In this article, Sun establishes and summarizes four main components that are necessary in treating homeless individuals with CODs. The first is ensuring an effective transition from an institution to the community. This involves numerous different tactics, such as establishing rules regarding discharge planning and developing a thorough discharge plan. This also involves offering critical time intervention. Critical time intervention goes one stop beyond discharge. It pairs the client with a social worker after discharge to help the individuals to remain stable and to have the resources to continue along the path of recovery (Sun, 2012). This step also involves providing motivational interviewing. This increases the chances of clients to attend outpatient appointments and helps them to remain committed to treatment. It is also important to engage clients early and to allocate funds for the client, which involves providing funds for rent, deposits, bills, etc. before they have employment (Sun, 2012).
The second component to treating homeless individuals experiencing CODs is to increase resources available to the clients. Many homeless individuals consider their economic situation to cause their homelessness, not their COD. Because of this, it is important to have economic resources available to the clients, such as government benefits (social security, income support, etc.), and to connect them with employment opportunities (Sun, 2012).
The third component is to link these clients to housing. Many times these clients place housing needs over all other needs. They will not be able to work on substance abuse issues if they are concerned about housing. Therefore, the social worker needs to start where the client is and help them with their most concerning issue (Sun, 2012).
Lastly, it is important to offer co-occurring treatment to these clients. It is more effective to combine psychiatric treatment with substance abuse treatment. In doing this, clients will be more likely to continue on the path to recovery (Sun, 2012).

Connection to Class:

This article connects to our class and our reading in that it is talking about co-occurring disorders. The article talks about how difficult it is to treat individuals not only with co-occurring disorders, but also those who are experiencing homelessness. It is important to understand the most effective treatments because this is an issue that is very prevalent in society and one that is not always focused on. In our reading for this week, the book mentioned treating homeless individuals and how professionals cannot always be sure whether the homelessness caused the disorders, or vice versa. It is very difficult to determine this, and so as the article states, we must start where the client is. I think that this article touched on a very good point when it stated that we need to help clients have stable housing before they can focus on their treatment.

Resources:

Sun, An-Pyng. (2012). Helping homeless individuals with co-occurring disorders: The four components. Social Work, 57(1), 23-37. doi: 10.1093/sw/swr008