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Problems in the Assessment of Mental Illness among the Homeless

An Empirical Approach

  • Chapter
Homelessness

Part of the book series: Topics in Social Psychiatry ((TSPS))

Abstract

Throughout most of the twentieth century, one image was sufficient to depict with reasonable accuracy the population of individuals with no fixed, stable abode at any given point in time. First there was the hobo, an itinerant worker who rode the rails while following the dictates of a lifestyle coherent and established enough to earn its own name—hobohemia—and to have its own newspaper—the Hobo News.1–3 Next came the victims of the Great Depression—residents of squatter towns dubbed Hoovervilles, and migrants, both single men and families, who traveled in the hope that elsewhere they might find the means to earn a living.4 Following the era of prosperity ushered in by World War II came the skid row alcoholic, an older white male whose ties to family and to the institutions of mainstream society had been overwhelmingly strained, if not completely severed.5–8

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Policy Department, The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, 90407-2138, USA

    Paul Koegel & M. Audrey Burnam

Authors
  1. Paul Koegel
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  2. M. Audrey Burnam
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Research Institute of San Francisco, Institute of Epidemiology and Behavioral Medicine, Alcohol Research Group, 2000 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, California, 94709, USA

    Marjorie J. Robertson Ph.D.

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and San Fernando Valley Program in Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, 90024, USA

    Milton Greenblatt M.D.

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Olive View Medical Center, Sylmar, California, 91342-1495, USA

    Milton Greenblatt M.D.

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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Koegel, P., Burnam, M.A. (1992). Problems in the Assessment of Mental Illness among the Homeless. In: Robertson, M.J., Greenblatt, M. (eds) Homelessness. Topics in Social Psychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0679-3_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0679-3_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-0681-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-0679-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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