Our Neighbors On The Streets: A Social Justice Perspective

Triple Challenged: Homeless, Mentally Ill and Addicted by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. To put yourself in another person's shoes you gotta first unlace your own. In our increasingly cosmopolitan world, our ability to imagine how other people think and feel is an essential social skill. Especially if these people live vastly different lives from our own. Empathy requires openness, self-awareness and a willingness to suspend judgment. Thankfully, it can be learned and becomes easier with practice. My topic is what I call the “triple challenged” --people who have mental health challenges, live on the streets, and have problems of substance abuse and addiction. In this period of economic recession, with the ensuing cuts in funding for social services, many of our nation's cities are flooded with people fitting this description. I happen to live in Santa Barbara, California, a wealthy coastal community 90 miles north of Los Angeles, with a regional...