“There are many reasons a person could find themselves homeless, but severe mental illness is a major contributor. Last month, Esquire ran a first-person account of Patrick Fealey, an award-winning journalist who found himself unable to hold a job after he was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder in 1997; after struggling for years, he became homeless in October 2023. While admitting that his particular cocktail of drugs is not ideal and negatively affects other parts of his body, Fealey writes that it also “enables me to function and has kept me alive for twenty-seven years.”
A 2019 meta analysis of 31 studies, encompassing nearly 52,000 homeless people in both developed and developing countries, found that more than 10 percent had schizophrenia or related disorders.
“While ensuring drug safety is essential,” Singer and Bloom write, “the REMS program has unintentionally created barriers that disproportionately affect individuals with severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia, further compounding the significant challenges they already face, including unemployment, substance abuse, heightened suicide risk and homelessness.””
https://reason.com/2024/12/05/fda-policy-worsens-homelessness-by-limiting-access-to-antipsychotics