Are Negative Youth Experiences and a Lack of Treatment for Psychological Problems related to Homelessness? And do they discriminate between People who were Homeless Once and People who were Recurrent Homeless? A Qualitative Study.

Abstract

Homelessness and, specifically, relapse in homelessness is becoming a bigger problem in the Netherlands. This qualitative study aims to analyze to what extent negative youth experiences and a lack of treatment for psychological problems are related to homelessness, and whether they discriminate between people who were homeless once and recurrent homeless people. Four additional factors were taken into consideration in this study: addiction, weak social network, involvement in criminal justice system and psychopathology. Thirty respondents were equally divided in two groups: homeless once (HO) and recurrent homeless (RH). Results showed that RH reported a higher prevalence of negative youth experiences and a broader range of those, compared to HO. RH also reported to match more factors of predictors than HO. Moreover, most people in RH reported to have an addiction to hard drugs, whereas most people in HO reported to have an addiction to soft drugs. A lack of treatment was barely reported by both RH and HO. Therefore this association remains unclear. It can be concluded that negative youth experiences and the four factors are related to homelessness and that they discriminate between both groups. These findings would be relevant to study further in larger groups in future research.