Health and Homelessness Free Essay Example, 3000 words

The first thing that the medical practitioner or drug worker should do is to try and stabilize the patient. This is both in the psychological and social setting. Often, this is hard as with homeless people, the odds or frequency of relapse are often higher than for the general population (Carr et al. 2007). Physical health is vital and this means reducing the amount of drug intake among the homeless population. This is identified as harm reduction, which involves sensitizing the population on the effects of criminal activities and the benefits of family/social relationships. Medical services need to have the proper avenue to address the plight of homeless drug users. By having the equipment necessary, drug workers may be in a position to check up on the homeless population on certain specified or unspecified days to ensure that the people are adhering to the set programmes (Graham 2007). This may also give them an avenue to get regular check-ups and have different avenues to also socialize and address their plight, especially with relation to drug use and addiction. This ensures that homeless people also have ways of tackling one of the biggest threats to homelessness mortality in the region (Watkins 2008). Alcohol Alcohol dependence among the homeless population is not something new, especially with the other complications that most of them suffer, for example; the neurological, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal complications that exist among most of the population. We will write a custom essay sample on Health and Homelessness or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Depression and suicide are not to be forgotten whenever the above are mentioned, because a high number of homeless people are suffering from depression due to the conditions they are exposed to on a regular basis (Hodgson & Irving 2007). The risk of suicide through different means is a common theme among homeless people in the UK, and this should be a matter of concern among all the policy makers present. Normally, homeless people will visit the general practitioner (GP) or drug worker with an urgent detoxification request (Scriven & Garman 2007). When this happens, it should not be a matter of prescribing different strategies for the patient without proper analysis and assessment of the patient in question. Preliminary assessment must be conducted from the GP, and support must be offered to guarantee or ascertain the proper rehabilitation of the patient. The lack of or failure to carry out a proper assessment might lead to seizures from the patient, which might not end well for the GP and the patient facing the alcohol dependency issues (Kemm et al.