Visit our Research Matters blog for weekly posts from the homelessness sector here. The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada.
Toronto Centre of Excellence. People think that when someone has nothing the best thing to do is to replace what they have lost and then the person should be able to rebuild their lives. If only homelessness were that easy to fix.
If giving someone a home and an income could insure that they would have what they needed to prosper we would see an end to homelessness. I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was 28 years old. I had an eighteen-month-old child and a fairly stable lifestyle. My husband was working in a well paying job and we owned our own home. We were the typical young couple of the 's.
By the time I realized the full impact of that diagnosis my marriage had fallen apart. My prognosis was grim β I was chronically and incurably insane.
Although we try to dress this diagnosis up a bit today, paranoid schizophrenia is not something people embrace in a loved one. Oddly enough, when I divorced my husband he did not fight for custody of our son. Ryan was all that kept me going through those days. The drugs I took were more costly than the income received but fortunately mother's allowance also included a drug card. Because I was diagnosed with schizophrenia I felt this was all I deserved in life. Initially, I was angry and I fought hard to believe that I was not destined to a life of poverty and despair but after about two years I realized this was all I could expect.
