Health Patterns Reveal Interdependent Needs of Dutch Homeless Service Users

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Mental Health Research
• Social Determinants of Health

Background:

• Homelessness is a growing concern in Western Europe.
• Dutch authorities conduct reviews to assess health needs of Homeless Service (HS) users.
• The Homeless People Treatment and Recovery (HOP-TR) study addresses this need.

Purpose of the Study:

• To comprehensively assess the health and needs of Dutch HS users.
• To understand the lived experiences and professional assessments of HS users.
• To inform integrated public health approaches for recovery.

Main Methods:

• Utilized naturalistic meta-snowball sampling (2015-2017) with 436 Dutch HS users.
• Employed the InterRAI Community Mental Health questionnaire and Homelessness Supplement.
• Adopted a transdiagnostic approach for mental health assessments, focusing on symptomatic, social, and personal health domains.

Main Results:

• Most participants were male, low-educated, with migration backgrounds, and long-term/intermittent homelessness.
• 95.0% had concurrent health problems in multiple domains.
• 98.6% exhibited mental health problems (72.5% severe), with high rates of addiction (78%), chronic physical conditions (59.2%), and intellectual impairments (39.9%).

Conclusions:

• The HOP-TR study highlights extensive concurrent health issues among Dutch HS users.
• Interdependent needs necessitate an integrated 3-D public health approach.
• Addressing symptomatic, social, and personal dimensions is key to facilitating recovery.