Homeless people suffer from somatic and mental illnesses more frequently than the general population. The focus is on diseases of the cardiovascular system and metabolism. Scientists at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) have now found this out.
Addiction disorders seem to play a particularly important role in mental illnesses. The migration history of the study participants was also identified as an important factor for their health and medical care.
The state of health of homeless people in Germany and internationally has so far only been described incompletely in research. In a national multi-centre cross-sectional study, the UKE scientists examined 651 homeless people in the metropolitan regions of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Leipzig and Munich. Questionnaires, laboratory and clinical examinations confirm that mental and physical illnesses are mostly more common among homeless people than in the general population.
Diseases of the cardiovascular system and metabolism were particularly common. “In addition, around 23 percent of the study participants reported a medically diagnosed mental illness. In around 70 percent of the homeless people, there were also indications of the existence of a possible unknown mental illness,” said study leader Fabian Heinrich from the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the UKE.
The study participants were also asked about their migration history: In general, homeless people of non-German origin are more likely to be homeless and without health insurance, and people from other EU countries are more likely to have physical illnesses. Mental illnesses, on the other hand, are more likely to occur among homeless people who were born in Germany.
“Our study underscores the vulnerability of homeless people in Germany and suggests an unmet need for psychiatric and psychotherapeutic treatment options. Programs to improve health care for homeless people should take homeless migrants into account in particular,” says study leader Franziska Bertram about the results.
