Prevention
This month we focus primarily on preventing addiction disorders from becoming homeless individuals with topic areas of (a) eviction prevention, (b) rental assistance w/mediation, (c) supporting at-risk populations, and (d) the financial savings prevention offers. Our video returns to UC Inc. and its interview with Mr. Powers from 2006. The ideology of primary prevention services verses tertiary services, with respect to the current homeless crisis and our HADs is touched upon lightly.
To provide housing or prevent the loss of it, for active addiction disorders, the ability to color within the lines of legal and social norms is overwhelming, nearly impossible! For safety purposes, proper supervision would require informed consent from our HADs (homeless addiction disorders) and prior authorization from agencies such as the DEA, FDA, EPA, FBI, and you get the idea. Housing officials and landlords may choose to turn a blind eye, to a point. When do law and/or liability concerns become an issue?
Offering volitional participation within confines of a research housing project is an idea! It compliments treatment processes by reducing stress levels experienced from imposed mandates and requirements of today’s housing rules. Offering volitional compliance, free from oppression, is crucial to a successful healing and recovery process. Remember, many of our HADs suffered oppressive childhood experiences: neglect, abuse, and/or exploitation. Let’s not bring it back to the surface without proper debriefing. We need to prevent lapses, regression, relapse, and suicidal ideation, respectively.
Critical Thinking vs Criticizing
While sharing a similar root word, thinking critically is not the same as criticizing. Often, when we criticize someone, or something, it is influenced by our own biases. Critical thinking, however, requires one to examine factual evidence and form an opinion based on substantiated evidence. Science is supposed to operate on those principles, but even scientists can stray. Sometimes scientists want their theories to prove true so badly that they distort or ignore evidence that dispels the theory. (Ebner)
Preventing Regression
Wanting to prevent suicidal ideation, while at the same time, wanting to extinguish an addiction disorder to gain housing is now on the table; and it’s generating cognitive dissonance. Which way do we go? Ask the scarecrow, a masterful display of cognitive dissonance. Problem with his display is that exuberant joyfulness; he’s off the cross! Dorothy was the one distressed by indecision. Cognitive dissonance involving opposing life or death choices nurture states of depression. When left unresolved, the state of mind evolves toward suicidal ideation. Let’s prevent that dilemma, as best we can while dealing with our HADs.
Stressors, the human process, and psychological anguish
For deeper dive into how harmful some of the current means being used to resolve homelessness, let’s hear from those doing studies. On our sister site you can see a Stress Reaction Model and how psychosocial events trigger pathology (mental illness). Today we have advanced comprehension of how early childhood experiences influence tolerance for stress from oppression later in life. Essentially, consistent regular emotional suffering causes mental and physical decline leading to unhealthy self-medicating practices.