San Francisco's homeless youth at 10 times higher risk of death

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/uoc--sfh041316.php

Public Release: 14-Apr-2016
San Francisco's homeless youth at 10 times higher risk of death
Street-based study shows suicide, substance abuse main cause of mortality among homeless youth
University of California - Berkeley

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Public Release: 14-Apr-2016
San Francisco's homeless youth at 10 times higher risk of death

Street-based study shows suicide, substance abuse main cause of mortality among homeless youth

University of California - Berkeley

A University of California, Berkeley, study of homeless youth living on the streets of San Francisco found that they have a 10 times higher mortality rate than their peers, mostly due to suicide and substance abuse.

"This population is highly stigmatized. That stigma leads to neglect and, in turn, to increased mortality. All the deaths in this cohort were preventable," said the study's main author, Colette Auerswald, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist who is an associate professor of public health at UC Berkeley. "Stigma kills."

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"That study once again blew out of the water the myth that youth either choose to be on the street or are on the street because they are delinquents," she said. "For the vast majority of youth in developed countries, homelessness is due to abuse or neglect or family conflict, often related to poverty."

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A recent census-based study of life expectancies in Canada found that a 25-year-old male living in shelters, rooming houses or hotels had a 32 percent chance of surviving to the age of 75, as compared to 51 percent of housed males from the lowest-fifth income bracket.

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The study was unique in that Auerswald and her colleagues actually went out on the street to survey homeless youth, instead of seeking them out at programs or drop-in centers for homeless youth. Such program-based recruitment produces a biased sample favoring lower-risk youth who access services, she said. Homeless youth are challenging and expensive to count, in part, because some youth of color - African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos in particular - do all they can to conceal the fact that they are homeless. Homeless white youth in San Francisco - who comprised half the study subjects - are more likely to openly sit on sidewalks or engage in activities such as panhandling that readily identify them as homeless.

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In this study, young women were slightly more likely to die than young men: They had a mortality rate 16.1 times greater than their race- and age-matched female peers. The homeless young men were 9.4 times more likely to die than their race- and age-matched male peers.

"Being homeless is dangerous for everybody, but the social environment of the street is particularly treacherous for young women," she said.

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