In this episode of the Neighbors Helping Neighbors podcast, we tackle the powerful stigma surrounding homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse. Join us as we explore how these misconceptions deeply impact individuals experiencing homelessness, preventing them from seeking the help they need. We also discuss the barriers stigma creates in accessing critical care, and how public perception often reinforces these challenges. Through this conversation, we aim to foster a more compassionate and informed community, where those struggling with mental health and substance abuse feel supported in their recovery. Tune in to understand the role of philanthropy and nonprofits in addressing these pressing issues and how we can all contribute to breaking down the stigma surrounding homelessness and addiction.
Podcast Transcript: Stigma, Homelessness and Behavioral Health
welcome back I’m Maggie one of the hosts
of neighbors helping neighbors the podcast from father Joe’s Villages this is a continuing Series where we explore homelessness its causes and solutions to the issue our guests include experts and leaders in the space people with lived experience and unique perspectives on homelessness.
To learn more about our mission visit us at neighbor.org and follow us on social media at father Joe’s excuse me we have
a really exciting topic today it’s something that’s been coming up in our previous episodes but we thought it
deserved an episode of its own and that topic is stigma what it is and how it
impacts the folks on the streets who are experiencing homelessness their health and their wellbeing and what we can do
about it I’m really excited for you to meet our guest today I love having father staff on the show because we have
truly remarkable people working inside our organization joining me today from
The Village Health Center are Dr Sarah Carrera family and Psychiatry physician
and Mark Stevenson licensed clinical social worker and Behavioral Health clinician with me always is my co-host
president and CEO of Father Joe’s Villages Deacon Jim welcome it’s good to have you with us welcome thank you for
having us that’s right no we’ve been exciting we’ve been expecting the today’s episode it’s an important
topic oh wow it’s it’s a big topic and I think it’s it’s one of the most important ones because it’s what people
see and they feel when they think about homelessness right which is the core of of a lot of things that happen in terms
of the support we have for our population it really is we always start with introductions and a little bit
about what you do at father Joe’s if you could start with soft doctor sure um so
as you mentioned I I do Family Medicine I do Psychiatry I do mostly Psychiatry right now just because there’s so much
need um and I also do therapy so I have some long-term therapy patients and I I
think that I try to do therapy with people every time they walk through the door even the first time because there’s
so much need and there’s so much that people have hidden inside that they’re just trying to push back and hide from
that we need to help them through so um I kind of build my practice around that concept of integrating and pulling
together all the pieces that people need in whatever moment that they’re most needing it as they walk in the door beautiful I’ve been here for six and a
half years by the way he’s been here [Laughter]
longer okay well I had a unique opportunity when I came to the Village uh I started out working actually with
the residents in the shelters uh in a mental health case management program and I’ve had uh an opportunity to work
so many different jobs within the village that I’ve really gotten a well-rounded uh view of what it’s like
for the folks that are coming through our our services and all the different aspects of the services so I’ve worked
in the uh residential structures with the with the folks providing mental health case management I’ve done uh run
the drug program that we have an outpatient a State Certified outpatient drug program on site uh I managed their
mental health program for a while before it was integrated into the clinic I got to do a special project that worked with
the highest users of the emergency room uh and I was a director of their permanent housing um Services uh to
provide Supportive Services for people that graduate from the shelter into per housing and from there I moved back down
to the clinic uh and started doing trauma therapy and working alongside Psychiatry to provide ongoing and uh
extra support for the folks that they’re they’re working with and that’s where I work with Sarah because she’s sending
people all the time and we get to communicate on what the best approach is you know you need someone good you go to
Mark you’re both well known at the village and how long have you been at the Village 19 years wow amazing long
time so you guys are the subject matter experts in our Clinic I think we we actually are AB absolutely and
behavioral health is more and more of an issue that we’re finding within um within the work we do at father Joe’s
Villages you know it better than anyone um let me I always try to start or i’ like to start always just informing our
listeners and informing our viewers of the comprehensiveness of our program so yes we have our Village Health Center
our federally qualified Village heal Center Behavioral Health is an important aspect of it Primary Care is as well
Dental Care is as well you know I always invite people to come and visit our village because we have that wall of
smiles the before and after restorative dentistry and how important that is not only as it relates to self-esteem but as
it relates to who’s going to get that job you know who’s going to find that housing and that’s very very important
Street Health you know that’s been a godsend for those who are on the streets and don’t access medicine in a
traditional way in Brick and MTAR just going out meeting them where they are and dispensing medications and
Healthcare that second atric care as well right right right there on the streets as well that’s important also
then we take care of our children therapy to child care anywhere from literally newborns up to age 18 through
our preschool program through our after school programs it’s incredibly important we know that we don’t mitigate
the circumstances they go They’re the future adults who are homeless and that’s not what we want for them they’re four four times more apt to be homeless
in adulthood if if we don’t get to their what’s what’s aien them in a sense right they academically emotionally it’s
socially delayed so we work with them and with their families as well employment employment like for most
people that’s what leads to income and so we have vocational training um so that we have we impart the marketable
skills that people need in order to be able go go out and be successful and it’s expensive to to really live here in
San Diego some people have multiple jobs as well and so that’s an important element and then we have shelter beds
right we have 8 to 8 to 900 shelter beds in any given night um and that’s an
important element in Mill meals that we serve on a yearly basis breakfast lunch and dinner so we’re unique in the space
of homelessness because we’re so comprehensive and so holistic in our approach and that’s what makes a difference in the lives of individuals
and of course in the end what breaks a cycle of homelessness truly a home and so we have our turning the key
initiative you know we’re deploying affordable housing units out there through either the acquisition and
refurbishment of motels or the construction new construction as well we need more housing here in San Diego we
don’t have enough and at the end in the end that’s what breaks the cycle of homelessness so that’s Whirlwind of you
know all our all our programs across the board but it’s good so the viewers and the listeners have a have an
appreciation of what we do as a whole right so anyway but today we’re going to focus on stigma we are and I can’t help
but start by sharing something that my great-grandfather used to always say he was a high school teacher and a coach
and whenever he was out with his family and they would see someone experiencing homelessness or kind of down and out he
would say to his his children one of which was my grandmother he would say remember to show them kindness he could
be an old hockey coach and even though that’s kind of silly and we laugh about it in our family what he was doing in
that moment was teaching his children to see the humanity in individuals and that
everybody despite their circumstances is deserving of kindness and compassion and
that’s what we’re talking about today is breaking down that stigma so so let’s start with what stigma really
is I went to the internet and got the dictionary
definition I got two I got the Websters and the Oxford and Webster said a mark of shame or disgrace associated with a
person quality or circumstance and the Oxford said a set of negative and often unfair beliefs that a society or group
of people have about something so what does that look like for our community the people who you
with whom you work right yeah so I interesting this was something that came through my email last week and I um I
immediately sat with one of my longer term therapy patients and I said hey he
was in a good space I said just tell me tell me about your experiences because I have to give this you know talk about
stigma and he said let me tell you and so I’m going to just read the quote from him um because I thought it was really
powerful to have it come through his own words um he said it’s not so much what people say or do as it’s what they think
about people such as myself it’s a feeling the way that people look at you that you’re like the scum of the earth
that they’re afraid to walk near you we aren’t we weren’t always like this none of us were a lot of us had real jobs we
did for years and for some unforeseen reason things happened to us we could never foresee what would happen to us to
put up put to put us in this position at one time I was a soldier I was a real person I am still a real person personal
things happened and devastated and destroyed me I’m still the same person that my mother raised I still have those
same same values wow powerful yeah mhm what kinds
of misconceptions are you saying Mark well I know in my experience that
uh you know there’s a lot of labeling going on that I think uh you know follows some of the folks that we serve
around um I think stigma in the beginning uh is like a wall that kind of blocks people’s ability to give somebody
full social acceptance you know it just blocks their ability to see them as a complete human being and them open to
just putting all these labels on them so what do our people look like that have mental health and substance abuse issues that come into our doors uh a lot of
times they could be really escalated they could be shouting all of this kind of stuff and sometimes people can
personalize that or get upset that the normal routine of their daily structure is not being followed and therefore we
must stop whatever it is that’s going on and everything and I know within reason we do have to maintain a certain level
of safety and all of that um but a lot of times uh people uh and I usually tell this to the people that I work with I
say they’re not yelling at you that’s the sound of their life squeezing out of them because everything that went through they went through before they
got right came through our door including having really bad experiences with other service providers we need to
give them a little bit of a break and I’m really proud to work in a place that hires special security teams that have a
high level of distress tolerance and a huge uh level of ability to be able to deescalate folks and when things get too
out of hand and they do have to ask them to leave the clinic it’s not you’re not banned from this Clinic you’re you’re as
you’re you know asked or even escorted out with an invitation to come by tomorrow and try again yeah and these are the kind of things that we have to
do because uh folks like we work with are constantly being labeled as uh non-compliant aggressive boisterous loud
belligerent rude all of this kind of stuff and when people begin to document uh these kind of things in clients files
you know those kind of things F uh follow them around you know and uh it
reminds me some words to a Pink Floyd song it says uh the paper holds folded faces to the floor and every day the pl
the paper boy brings more uh my wife had a program once and she taught me this about strength based case management
documentation and she said instead of client failed to follow through with the instructions they would write I failed
to be able to get the client to be motivated enough to follow through the instructions and it would leave them an opportunity to try some other angle or
approach uh to motivate them it just shows that the perspective that we come from shifts the outcom right and I think
that sometimes when we see certain things they stick in our brain and we assume and we generalize I mean a lot of
times we generalize because our brains are made to do that our brains are supposed to take in stimulus and try to put it in a category to allow us to
understand the world and keep going to be able to focus on the things in front of us but the problem is when we see one thing or one person have one experience
that could be Harden and I I bet all of us in the room are sitting here having had an experience with somebody that was out on the street that wasn’t safe for
example and we knew it wasn’t safe we didn’t feel it was safe and it was a scary SL I’m going to stay away kind of
moment that we then have the tendency as human beings to generalize that to others and use that experience that then
becomes a judgment around others and and also we take that view that we have of
the person in that moment and we because we don’t have a lot of other bandwidth and and that’s all we have in front of
us we take that to be this is that person and this is the reality for them versus this person has that one aspect
of them but keeping your mind open the fact that there are probably a lot of other aspects to that person and things
behind it that could have led to that moment being what it was it reminds me of something I think it was our first
podcast we had Tamara kler from rtfh on first or second and she was discussing
just that how our folks that are um experiencing homelessness or living out on the street someone might be having
the worst day of their lives and they don’t have any other place to have that breakdown except right there and thank
goodness I wasn’t you know thank goodness I had my home to have my worst day you know what I mean and just so
just having that compassion and there was there was a meta analysis that was done there’s only one that’s been done on homelessness and and Trauma PTSD but
it shows that people who live on the streets and who have lived on the streets 94% of them have
PTSD and so the the triggering and the the emotional Outburst or you know it
makes sense for somebody who’s had a lot of trauma and they can relive that at the smallest thing and and your right
brain takes over and the left brain goes down and it means that you’re really just reliving those emotions of the past
and and you can act out of that in ways that you wouldn’t if you were cognitively present and for some the
PTSD may have been one of the reasons that threw them onto the streets right they have been other reasons as well and
for others they may have developed the PTSD on the streets especially if you’ve been chronically on the streets right so
it’s just you know that one day you mentioned Maggie that one day they may be having a really bad day and yet yet
the reality is that living on the streets can you imagine I mean I’ve never I’ve never thank God had had to
cope with that but I can only imagine how difficult that is I mean most of the days if not all the days are a challenge
in one way or another right and it’s survival that’s exactly right I mean I
actually I I admire individuals are able to really survive that type of an
environment right and come out of it and you guys see it on a day daily basis how people do and they and you know you tap
into that potential you tap into that potential and you rest that hope almost in them because they’ve lost hope and
and and they’re able to survive it all that’s the exact strength based perspective that we talk about when we want to work with somebody not only
somebody that’s homeless or somebody with mental health problems or substance abuse issues you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it
we have to find out what are the strengths that some of these folks have that we can begin to build on and one of the major ones is God did you show up to
an appointment today that’s a strength let’s build on that strength uh man you’re out there surviving on a
day-to-day basis you have to duct tape your backpack to your chest at night when you go to sleep to try to make sure it doesn’t walk off and be gone by the
time you wake up in the morning let’s talk a little bit about the courage that it takes to do all of that and the strength that it takes to do that and
how can we take some of that courage and maybe accomplish this little task that moves us a little bit closer to housing
you know so that’s exactly the kind of thing that we want to be able to do I have a client that’s severely psychotic
right and she believes that she can hear God talking to her and she also believes and becomes very paranoid about the
potential that she might be sex traffic because of things that have happened to her in the past but for a number of years none of those things have really
happened but she gets really paranoid and so instead of trying to find some U Bonafide solution that makes sense to me
I reached into a psychosis and I said okay let’s look at how God has protected you over all this time and let’s see how
we can apply that knowledge that you know God is with you to this time these times that you get really paranoid and
it’s working you know so we have to have some kind of creative ways to be able to really look at the person themselves and
what they’re going through and and apply interventions that make sense to them right Markus taught me a lot about that
I watch him and I I soak things in as I I see him in the hallway each other you know one of the things that I
was just thinking about though as you were talking about people who are on the streets and how hard that is and that the what we see when we’re outside is
that homelessness doesn’t just have one face right we see the people who have really just fallen through the cracks of
of of society and everything and and and become chronically homeless there’s so much to homelessness beyond that people
who are couch surfing and jumping back and forth between friends and family people who are hiding it with everything
that they have trying to just pretend that it doesn’t exist and that they’re okay and they can make it scraping by
and frequently that actually prevents people from getting the help that they need too because they don’t want to admit that they are homeless because it
comes with the stigma and the Judgment of of others tell me more about that tell me more about the impact that
stigma that they’re carrying around on top of everything else that they’re dealing with impacts their health or um
you know prevents them from seeking care Mark oh yeah no problem you know uh
we serve countless people that come through our doors that have uh had a string of very bad experiences of being
judged being cast out being called you know like those labels that I mentioned earlier non-compliant resistant
irritable restless uh all of these things that make it hard for them to work with and a lot of the times you
know what that is is somebody is struggling to be able to follow somebody’s established uh Norm of how
these services are delivered instead of trying to build the way that we deliver these services around the client and
their reality you know so we we deal with that all the time we have clients come in and they are already ready for
it not to work because of all the times they’ve been you know judged and shoed out and and put to the side and told not
to come back by other service providers in the community um so us being being
able to have patient us being able to have room for them to escalate a little bit you know have a range for them to
say hey it’s okay I don’t know how many times I’ll be sitting in my office and I’ll have a client in my office and the doors close and that client will start
screaming again that’s the sound of their life squeezing out of them it’s not necessarily at me but it needs they
need a safe place to do that I have people that are in the clinic coming to the door knocking on the door Mark are you okay hey we’re fine in here you know
and uh and and sometimes I need to let them have room to be able to do that and when they realize they don’t get labeled
judged or kicked out for all of that kind of stuff they calm down they begin to get into a better place to be able to
uh you know participate in some of the other interventions were able to do to help their lives I love that I had a
woman this morning who walked in and she said I didn’t want to see anybody but my friend really said I had to see somebody
and she said and I asked like who should I see and they said I should see you because you’ve been here longer and that
you’d be good but she said I walked I walked into your room and she’s like wow I I have a forest in my room and
I and I love it I have lots of plants and and and she’s like wow okay and she
said you know I’ve had really bad experiences of a medical profession she said thank you for not judging me thank you for allowing for me to be me and not
feel pressured and she said I just feel comfortable and safe here she said I I want to come back and it was just that
recognition that we do something special where we are in helping people feel safe and comfortable and we don’t judge and
we do have space for people and it’s not always an outburst sometimes it’s just giving people space to say I’m not going
to push you to do anything you don’t want to do I’m going to let you be who you are and have the experiences you’ve had and I’m going to listen to you and
I’m going to allow for you to decide what the next step is I’ll give you options and I say to people I’m here to give you tools um and you’re the one
that decides what you want to use I’ll just give you the information that I have and I’ll walk beside you even if
you decide not to have treatment because some people decide they don’t want anything except to come and talk to me and I said okay well that you know
that’s fine well the concept of walk walking beside another isn’t that great you Journey with them you Journey with
them I I like to say that you know we journey with individuals as a journey out of homelessness right I mean and
that’s that’s an important element just meeting them where they are right and and so what are the um what are the
biases that you find in individuals as it relates to those who we serve what do
you what are those and PE we all have biases obviously as it relates to a lot of things but but when it comes to our
those who we’re we’re blessed to serve right those who are on the streets are on house what are the biases that you
with which they contend actually I found some do should we play fact or
fiction yeah I love it most are mentally ill true true or false right right yeah
what do you what do you think about that I don’t think that should be uh something that you would use even if it was true right because that’s labeling
label labeling and stigmatizing right and and yet and yet
if we were to address that with individuals yes we can address it by saying maybe that’s not how we should
use that term or or that we should be using that term the reality is that most
of the individuals don’t have mental health challenges right and and and so
but people think and as a as a result it creates a bias against right so they see
they think that to your PowerPoint doctor that they think that then everybody categorize everybody is having
mental health issues because they’ve encountered a few who have well I think a lot of people who
aren’t homeless right have mental challenges right we all have emotional
challenges and I I think that you know I’ve had therapy in my life how many people do I know that I’ve had therapy are going to get there because now it’s
less stigmatized than it used to be and at what point do you call it a mental illness because you have emotions that
are hard right if you’re in a situation in your life where you’ve had hard things happen to you you know you’re going to you’re going to have a lot of
emotion based on that and you’re going to have needs that go beyond just you know a clinician that can give you a
pill that is for blood pressure or diabetes but I don’t think that makes it something that you know could be said oh
they all have mental illness versus like Hey we’re humans and we all have emotional needs and it’s figuring out
what that is and making sure that we’re treating it and yeah we know that some are psychotic like you mentioned Mark
and but that doesn’t mean they’re all psychotic all right that’s so that’s why I mentioned that right again it’s it’s not only labeling but it’s then think
applying that across the board to an entire category um so that’s that’s that’s one some of the others that came
up were were the majority abuse drugs and alcohol they’re dangerous and violent they’re criminals bad choices
led to their homelessness um they spend all their money on drugs or they just need to get
a job need to get a job the reality is
that most people people with whom we work have jobs right some of them in fact have two and three jobs it’s
extremely important to live here right and then if you’re only making minimum wage it’s and you have a family I mean
so it’s difficult so it’s not a matter so in that situation it’s a matter you know how can we help individuals in
order to really succeed at their jobs or they have promotional opportunities and they like whatever that is um so it’s
not a matter that they’re lazy or they don’t have jobs right but how can we maximize that experience for them so
that they can be a successful self-sufficient as possible yeah most folks probably don’t know the distance between the sidewalk and this job um
type of thing sometimes there’s uh there’s a distance there that really uh it makes it really hard for somebody to just jump from there uh without the
right kind help and support you know and if we have too many things levied against them or too many labels pushing
them back down um then they’re aren’t going to be able to make that jump um you know without our help so um you know
all of the services and things that we have I know from my experience here at the village that uh and and other places
that I’ve worked that untrained staff tend to enforce rules and then trained staff are able to be better at uh
looking at different angles and approaches and ways of saying things to to to be able to Reach people and I know
that we do a prettyy good job especially you know I’ve noticed in the clinic too but we do a pretty good job at father Joe’s Villages of hiring people that
really want to work with this population and really want to reach them and they know the value of creating that
relationship being an anchor for a lot of these folks because a lot of times I have people coming in that yeah there’s
a lot of other things we probably need to work on and get to and therapy that I think they should have and all of that kind of stuff but what they really need
right now is to feel like a human being when they walk out my door when we’re done and they need to feel like they have an an in this place because when
they walk outside sometimes they’re just involved in that chaos until the next visit they come back at tell me more about some of the
practices on the father Joes Villages campus that combat stigma you you referen the security guards that have um
additional training hiring staff who have lip experience or who have special
training it reminds me of a uh one of the security guards one time there was a somebody that lives on the streets and
we all knew him his name was Mo God Rest his soul but uh he was sleeping under the stairwell and nobody’s supposed to be under the
stairwell and he and uh the security guard went over to wake him up tapping on his toes and things like that his
boots and uh you Mo was waking up and he was getting really mad and he was cussing and and and yelling and doing
all of this stuff and and the security guard just said you know mo I can’t go I got to get you up I got to get you out
of here and he yelled and spit and and got angry a little bit more and he said Mo I’m I’m waiting for you I’m just
waiting for you to show up here with me so we can go and get this done and and so Mo finally realized that this guy
didn’t want to hurt him and he said well can I get a good morning kiss you know and he got up and he walked away with
them you know and what we need to do is not be freaked out about people’s reactions because we don’t know all of
where those reactions are come from something we say do or um exhibit you know might remind them of a way that
they’ve been hurt in the past and they have to get past that you know we have to give them room uh to feel that okay
look they’re not running away they’re not pushing me out they’re not labeling me you know they’re not doing all of this stuff until they finally trust us
sometimes that can take quite a while well you know it’s what what comes to my mind with that story is a great story
and it’s and it’s not so much that the the security guard was going to give him an actual kiss so that Mo was actually
expecting a kiss but it’s more so it points to connection right that we all
need to feel connected and he needed to feel connected all right and and and mo
allowed that connection because they made that connection it wasn’t through an actual kiss it was going but you got
from anger to humor you’re right because of a connection all right we all you know we’re not meant to be lone lone
people all right we’re meant to be communal people I mean I think that’s within our DNA and I think that’s an
example of that I think once they once he felt that connection with Mo with only for that moment right it made it
made a difference right yeah yeah you know I I want to get back to the question that you asked earlier about
what people experience and how they incorporate that and how that affects their mental health cuz I I have a story
right right before this Reach Out happened just the week before I had a patient who had come in and she had said
to me at some point in there because we were talking about her really significant depression and she said yeah
when I became homeless my ability to believe in myself and my sense of my own
worth just tanked um so I reached back out to her and and I finally got in touch with her this morning and I said
I’d like to know a little a little bit more is said okay if you tell me more and I I want to be able to share your
voice um and so I I’d like to tell her story real quickly that’s okay okay um
this is someone who’s she’s she’s early 30s and um she said I mean she was
actually telling me in an appointment that week she was telling me how she had just always wanted to be a princess like
a real life Princess that was her dream growing up up until mid- teenager she really thought she was going to be a
princess and um uh she then had gotten out and she got a job
and she had a career her mom committed suicide when you know about a decade ago um and
she had that change a lot in her life and then she ended up working she was working three jobs and trying to make it
because her significant other had lost their job and so pricing was so high for things she was literally almost not
sleeping to try and make ends meet to keep them in a motel um and then she she
um her signifant other God gotten into meth and she said no you just needed to stay awake that’s it she’s and and
finally she decided to try it because she was so tired she just wanted to stay awake and she’d been on she’ had ADHD
and she hadd been on ader all earlier in her life and she said I don’t my personality isn’t to be isn’t to have
addictions she’s like so I wasn’t really worried about it I just thought it would help me to be functional because then I could not you know not lose what I
already had and um and so she started using and right after that she got pretty sick but she said my my brain was
affected first and so I went into the hospital just to tell them how sick I was but I thought there were bugs all over me and so they saw me and they
realized I was on meth and they just kicked me out and they didn’t address my my illness she so I ended up going I had
to go back to the Ed a couple more times and finally they realized that I had a kidney infection but they had kept me in
the hallway outside and they they didn’t I was so weak I could hardly get up but
they wouldn’t help me go to the bathroom and they wouldn’t they wouldn’t do anything for me and yet the person in the bed next to me was giving getting
all kinds of treatment and accommodations made for them and the help and the you know she said it just was so hard for me to see and I had such
great anxiety that I ended up just quitting my job my anxiety took over and I just
couldn’t keep it all together anymore on top of having lost so much time out of work cuz she was so sick and no one was
addressing it and she said I I didn’t think I’d actually ever be homeless um I
didn’t think that was a possibility and then all of a sudden she was and she was on the streets and um I I’ll I’ll read a
quick quote um or just a couple things that she said her experiences of being homeless and on the streets um said
people knew that I was homeless because you know I had bags of things and so there was no hiding that um and she they
stood out they also had the three animals with them that they had had from before which were their family and they weren’t going to get rid of them they
had people tell her that she shouldn’t have her animals she had people follow her in the stores and acted like she was going to steal something she said I
would never steal anything that’s not who I am um and the worst was when they took her dog away um she had gotten
arrested for um illegal lodging basically just camping on the streets um
and then the animals were taken and she didn’t have the money to get her 19-year-old dog back out and they put him down and it was just devastating for
her and she said I just lost my sense of capacity to be okay in me I didn’t think
that it was worth anything anymore people just acted so differently and I I
was lost the loss of control m i mean total control L of so many things so many things yeah yeah the stigma kind of
perpetuating it and further marginalizing yeah and then getting more and more into the addiction that she
then had right as a result right um just a spiral yeah trying to come back from
that now we’re working on that actively and that’s the result that’s the result of stigma right I mean we think we think
about it that’s perfect example in just the way you laid it out and and what had happened to her one thing led to another
and the why but a lot of it had to relate to how she was being viewed and
how she was stigmatized and so the result is that is it is a spiral it just gets worse and worse and worse and I
wonder if somebody had reached out in the hospital and been able to wrap around her and say hey all this is
happening in your life how do we help cut it off now how do we help support you to get to yourself to a better space
how do we help you with resources instead of marginalizing her more to where she didn’t have well I’m happy
that you’re in her life at this point and I’m hoping I’ll pray for her I’m hoping that that that it’ll make a
difference and you can help to lift her up right we’re working on it yeah yeah so what can we what can we do as a
community as individuals to do better to recognize these stigmas and and do
better for our neighbors for the community at large I would kind of challenged and ask uh ask
you to ask yourself some questions you know like when you’re driving down the street and you see folks that uh have
their bags and stuff around them and maybe trash that they didn’t have any place to throw away yet um uh what goes
through your mind I mean do you say wow um look at that person they probably have been through an awful lot to get
where they’re at and uh look what they’re doing with almost no resources at all they’re surviving and thriving on a day-to-day basis that’s probably not
what goes through many people’s heads you know but sometimes we might have to challenge what automatically goes through our heads about about the folks
that we’re seeing outside there you know like what happened to them before they got there this is somebody’s father somebody’s sister Somebody’s Mother
somebody’s son um what happened where did the love run run out in their life you know what broke uh that ended up uh
them being uh down this path and why are they all by themselves in that little spot right there you know or when I see
a group of them huddled together you know um how do I identify in my mind that they’re um you know actually uh
probably trying to sleep together to protect each other at night in instead of thinking oh my there they go making
the place look ugly again you know challenge your automatic thoughts about what it is that you’re seeing here so that you can begin to see a more human
side of yourself um to look at the more human side of them yes that’s that’s
excellent that’s excellent yeah absolutely what do you think Dr Sarah I think there’s so many ways we
could probably help I think what Mark said is is right we have to question our thoughts and be paying attention to how
we quickly judge out of fear I think we judge out of out of not wanting to
believe that we’re part of that that we could be part of that we we separate
oursel and we disconnect where in the end we’re we’re all so incredibly connected and if if any of us had some
of the things happen that that our patients have had happen we might be in the same situation and recognizing that
you know we are all in this together and trying to bring ourselves to where we can all feel that and try to support
each other in walking this journey together as as as humans and community members therefore the grace of God goai
right if you you think about it you never know and we see it because we see doctors and engineers and lawyers and so
many others who have been professional have had professional careers and they come across our threshold no longer in
those careers for the various circumstances right and when you get to know them and you realize oh my gosh
what’s happened in these lives right and it always it always they for the for the
grace of God go ey you never know what can happen circumstances do happen not in economic and otherwise right so um
yeah I have clients uh that I see that have a PhD and master master’s degrees
and things like that uh we don’t know when somebody’s mental health is going to cause them to unravel or or backtrack
or cause problems in their lives that end them down that slide that leads to to where we’re at here today you know
and they need just as much help as anyone yes sometimes people have a diagnosis of cancer for themselves or they loved one and they end up having to
let everything fall apart to be able to stay and take care of that person because that’s their Rock right I mean
there’s so many reasons that people’s lives fall apart um without having any indication that it’s going to happen and
then trying to put it back together it’s an upward battle so it must be a good
feeling on on your parts as you work with individuals and you see them progress as you Journey with them as you
mentioned that must be a really good feeling it is a great feeling but on the same side of that too we also in a lot
of areas want to see more like uh taking a look at program design there’s certain things that we are built to be able to
do uh there at the clinic and we try to go above and beyond and do what we can Street Health is a way that we’re reaching out farther into the community
to do more than we were doing before it’s amazing um but I have a particular client here right now that is uh
immobile she has an electric wheelchair the electric wheelchair is broken uh she’s in her apartment not able to clean
her apartment so the system uh the voucher she’s in uh has put her in a batement for not keeping the apartment
up to standards but she has no way herself to take care of it her mental health is so bad she’s uh you know it’s
very difficult sometimes uh for her to get along with people working with her and things like that and so she’s had
trouble being able to get um In Home Supportive Services in there to help so we’re looking at somebody that potentially could fall backwards out of
housing because there isn’t something designed that can help her in a more intense way that uh that she really
needs um versus just more of a standard design of of case management or
something like that so we all always need to look at the program design to try to understand what can we do more
how can we make sure that you know I’m not being clinically hindered to the point where I’m just deciding what I
can’t do versus trying to find ways of doing what I can that’s excellent and and that’s where we Advocate right
because when we we see those experiences that’s when we try to get funding that’s
that’s that addresses situations like that because the reality is that a lot of the funding it’s almost a cookie
cutter approach and individuals are unique in their circumstances right and you can’t just apply one level of care
reality is that there’s a lot of care that’s needed out there and so how do we find those resources for them they are
you know if they exist you know we need to find those resources if they don’t exist well how can we advocate in order
to get additional resources and from a more mechanical level we’re a village right and I learned a long time ago that
as a village there’s a certain things we can do together so one of the things that happened in this particular woman’s case is I reached out to Street Health
who reached out to the client and then we reached out to uh the case management program that was in that building and we
gathered people together and kind of formed a team even though it wasn’t part of anybody’s program it’s kind of a little outside of it to be able to try
to come in there and make sure this person knows to go backwards and sometimes we have to serve a need before
the program is built or the funding is secured or anything like that you know because we’re trying to change and
homelessness one life at a time here and so that’s the one life in that moment right right you mentioned an interesting
aspect of of of us and I alluded to this at the beginning and that’s the comprehensiveness of our programs the
fact that you can form a team of that nature pulling from different areas of our campus in our organization in order
to make a difference right that’s great so whether they be resources from the Health Center or from the employment
case management residential as you mentioned across the board to truly then then make a difference that’s that’s
great when I was doing project 25 I used everything from security to facilities
um to the residential everybody everybody in the village was involved in Project 25 to make that program work and
it made us a very unique agency to be able to do things that probably no other agency will would ever be able to do yet
in spite of that um instead of continuing to fund uh that particular project with with this agency that could
do so much more than other people it took a different direction it’s really that kind of thing happens it’s
wonderful to see this Village at work definitely something to see and actually I would also recommend volunteering as a
way of educating yourself and breaking stigma because having conversations with
people who are actually homeless and that was one of the things that one of my patients suggested he said I wish
that people got to talk to real people who are homeless and and really ask them
about their experiences in their lives to get a better sense of what that feels like what that’s been like for them and
really connect with the humanity he’s like they learned so much and I love that this is a way to do that that’s
exactly right well getting that perspective is so important so it’s not being so that’s not being done unto them
but it’s you know what is it what are the needs out there what how do they feel about it we have um someone with
lived experience on our board as an example and that’s an important element right so that we can get that person’s
perspective that’s absolutely important we have people who live The Experience on our team and that’s so very very
critical and on the within our teams you know yes right that’s right that’s exactly right well this has been a
wonderful conversation thank you all so much for being here yeah this has been great for we’re going to invite you back
we have to we have to talk some more we pick your brain a little I mean you mentioned you you mentioned project 25
and and that that that can be that can be a segment unto itself and so yeah and
that that’s and I know you were so intimately involved in the in in that program and it was so it made such a
difference in the in the of individual and it took a village and that’s an important element as well so
we’re going to invite you back you guys are great thanks for all thank you both you all right and thank you for joining
in the conversation we’ve been a Beacon of Hope for 75 years and we’re not only a service provider we’re a movement and
a catalyst for change the face of homelessness is changing and father Joe’s Villages is adapting to meet the
moment if you’d like to learn more about our mission visit us at neighbor.org we we’ll see you on the next
one how will you get involved join us and take action for our neighbors in need father Joe’s Villages is rebuilding
lives and you can make a difference whether it’s through cash donations volunteering your time contributing
HomeGoods or clothing shopping at our thrift stores or online or participating in planned giving there are numerous
ways to get involved take action today at neighbor.org because together we are
all neighbors helping neighbors
