Hospitalized homeless people are deserted
07-05-2008

It is a severe case of abandonment, when persons who are both mentally ill and homeless, in connection with a hospitalization in a psychiatric department, cannot be released because the social authorities do not live up to their responsibilities. Even though it must be obvious, it does seem to be a continuous problem.

It has, for I do not know what time within the last couple of years, been brought to the media’s attention (Nyhedsavisen and TV2 News, 30^th of April 2008) that there are persons who have been admitted to Skt. Hans Hospital (A Danish psychiatric hospital in Roskilde) that could have been released ages ago, but because they are homeless still are staying at the hospital. Some of these persons have stayed there for years.

I have noticed that the expression used from all sides is that this is “fully treated patients, who are waiting for a place to live”. But I would like to state that the truthful way of wording this is that these persons are “persons with a severe psycho-social handicap, who are homeless”. According to Danish Law, Consolidation Act on Social Services, there is no doubt that the municipality to which these persons are registered has the obligation to help them with at least finding a place to live outside the hospital, but supposedly for most of these persons a special form of housing arrangement.

There are several reasons why there must be paid attention to these circumstances. First, because a hospital bed is expensive, second, because it is unfair that someone who does not need treatment takes up the place for someone who does.

But it is even worse that an admitted person probably has no saying in what kind of treatment that, I presume, the hospital will continue to give. For a mentally ill person, who is a patient, are all other kinds of treatments probably out of the question. 

By the homeless count in Denmark in week 6, 2007, it was stated that in this week, there was 223 persons, equivalent to 4 percent of all homeless in same week, who were admitted to a hospital, and whom could expect to be released in a short time without a place to live. A part of these persons were admitted to Skt. Hans Hospital and were registered in the municipality of Copenhagen. And this is how it has been year after year. And apparently still is.  

There have probably been lots of excuses. Good excuses too, I can imagine that one would call them. But they just cannot be so. Because if it is not possible to solve such a severe, yet still in numbers a very modest, problem for this small group of powerless homeless, how should one then ever believe that there is in fact will and ability to deal with homelessness at all?         

Preben Brandt