Mental health training in emergency homeless shelters

Abstract

The prevalence of mental illness among homeless persons points to the importance of providing mental health training to emergency shelter staff. The authors report on their own work and argue that such training offers the potential to significantly improve shelter staff's ability to respond to the needs of shelter residents with mental illness, and to the behavioral problems some of these individuals may pose for shelter operation. Mental health care providers should take into consideration organizational dynamics when planning and implementing such training.