Housing and finances are important issues that have a direct impact on the wellbeing of people with severe mental health problems. The experience of symptoms, side-effects from certain medications and discrimination can create problems for ongoing employment (see also Experiences of Work, and Negotiating daily life). Unstable or lack of employment can have a negative impact on people’s financial position which can in turn affect their housing situation, as well as their participation in social activities. Securing and maintaining stable housing is a key aspect of personal recovery and depends on financial certainty.
The people we spoke to talked about the importance of housing and finances in relation to their experiences of severe mental health problems. For some, finding and maintaining accommodation in which they felt comfortable was a crucial aspect of their personal recovery and remaining well. People also spoke about how their experience of mental health problems had affected their financial situation. They mentioned the challenges of managing their daily living on a reduced income, relying on government support or help from family, and the importance of maintaining social connections.
Living with other people had been difficult for David until he moved in with a friend. He said they have a mutually supportive relationship.
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I have gone through a number of housemates. I moved out of home at about 22, 23. Had the relationship break down. I’ve had a number of housemates that all eventually didn’t, things didn’t work out very well with them. Probably just more of my… I struggled with the sharing of my personal space. And these people were sort of people I didn’t know any other way than on a casual basis. Even as a housemate I didn’t really interact very well with others. Eventually I reconnected with someone that I’d been to school with, someone I’d known since I was eight years old. And I saw his mother at a music function and we discussed, you know I asked after her son. Like, I hadn’t had contact with him for several years.
And he was going through a relationship breakdown. And had just come out of an in-patient service. And I chucked out my housemate and we ended up moving in together. And we’re still living together now. You know, when one’s struggling, the other supports. When we’re both okay, you know, travel in our different lives separately. We go to see movies together. We’re a bit of support for each other, but we don’t – we’re not disruptive of each other’s lives.
Alice talked about the impact of being diagnosed with ‘reactive psychosis’ on her finances and ‘lifestyle’.
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I don’t dine out nearly as much as I did then. But I’ll still dine out probably at least once a week these days. And you know, I kind of… so I don’t feel like my lifestyle has hugely altered. But probably that’s the luxury of not having dependents and, you know, being in a supportive family arrangement as well. I think again being put in the frame of a mental health practitioner, they all say, “Well you’re still batting above the average”, you know. But from my perspective, I guess that financial, it wasn’t necessarily stability, but that financial continuity that I had with work, put me in a way in which I felt that it gave me the ability and the choice to be able to do things that I wanted to in life. So it gave me that sense of freedom, you know even though technically I was tied to an employer. But it kind of, I haven’t, you know, I haven’t really had since this happened, I haven’t had that continuity in salary for a long time.
Housing and wellbeing
Finding and maintaining secure housing was important for people’s sense of wellbeing. People’s accommodation arrangements varied and included both public housing and private rental accommodation, supported accommodation, or their own homes. Many people lived alone or with a pet, while some lived with friends, housemates, or family members.
For Chris, having a stable home was one of the key ‘foundations’ of his personal recovery along with taking medication and other forms of support. He said having these things in place enabled him to ‘develop and go to places’ he never thought possible. Housing provided a sense of stability in people’s lives and was a base that enabled them to feel connected to their local community.
Niall said accepting an offer of moving into a public housing unit was ‘not a big decision’. He has stayed there longer than planned, because the atmosphere makes him ‘feel good’.
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I was in transitional housing for two years and then I joined [support service] in 2003 and I had a few support workers. But then I got this house in 2005 and it was, well, it was the best thing that happened to me actually. Even though we’ve had a few difficulties here, in public housing with people with drug and mental health issues and, as you know, there’s been police here at times and there’s been a few issues.
But, overall, it’s been a good experience for me and I’m lucky I’ve had this nice unit to live in all these years. I know that I could’ve, you know, had dealing with a lot worse circumstances. So I’ve been fortunate there and so the decision to take the unit was not a really big decision. I thought – well, I jumped at that and I thought, ‘Well, yes, I’ll take it’.
You know, I live at [suburb]. I wouldn’t have chosen to live at [suburb] all those years ago. And I once said I’d only be here for five years and 10 years later I’m still here. But I think that’s a good thing and…
What keeps you here?
I’ve got the tennis club and I’ve got people and I’ve got a good friend around the corner now, who I’ve just met and I like the atmosphere. If I go down the street people are nice in the shops, they say hello. And even if you walk down the street sometimes, people will say hello and it just makes you feel good.
You know, it’s a happy, you know, it’s a good environment.
Some people spoke about the challenges of shared living arrangements, but generally appreciated the support that came with living with others. Brian said that he appreciated the ‘company’ when he lived with someone he had met in a mental health in-patient unit for several years. Some people spoke about the positive effect that their living arrangements had on their mental wellbeing.
Gurvinder did not enjoy ‘living in a box’ with lots of people around. With the help of his mother, he eventually found a home that gave him a ‘nice calming feeling’.
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I live in a unit, yeah.
And how did that come about?
That came about straight after I got out of the psych unit. My mum organised it, yeah. They said that the… I was going to go to this clinic and then my mum found the unit and stuff and put a deposit down and yeah. And eventually I started living there.
My mum had seen another couple of places and stuff so I went and saw that place and because the uni apartments were really small and you can hear every single noise and wall and everything. Like people making noises and stuff. So it was very, like even a little noise continuously annoys me sort of thing. So yeah, I just told mum, “Mum I want somewhere where it’s, you know, a bit of room and a bit spacious”.
And luckily this apartment is like that and it might be a bit old but it’s still, you know, it’s still pretty good and there’s a nice garden and everything. Here I got a big balcony and yeah, I find it really good. Yeah.
It’s really interesting because it’s maybe something that lots of people don’t understand about the impact of that environment and how it impacted on your mental health.
Yeah, because people were putting fire alarms off, students were putting fire alarms off and there was, you know, going past. They would knock on the wall as they were walking past and you can hear it from the start of your unit til the end of the unit and just little things like that really started to impact on you. And also there only used to be one window that used to face out and darkness in the flat and you always had to turn on the lights and stuff like that.
So little things like that, you find makes you unstable. Whereas if you find, big spacious room, a nice calm feeling about it, I enjoy that. Like yeah, you need that for your health as well I think.
Homelessness and unstable housing
Housing instability was a common experience among the people we talked to, with several describing periods of homelessness, extended hospital stays, or, in two cases, time in prison. Several people spoke about the interrelationship between their housing situation and their mental health. Some felt that unstable housing had a negative impact on their mental health, including Charlie who said of her experience of homelessness: ‘If you’re wandering the streets there’s no way you can have a routine of medication. There’s no routine on the street, not really’.
Cindy linked her diagnosis of depression and hospitalisation to her ‘awful’ experience of ‘couch surfing’ with her daughter.
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I think when I went in the second time I was pretty frustrated as well but it’s kind of having a break from the world sometimes if you are that way because you’re reacting badly to everything and I was homeless around then. It was awful because you’ve got to get along with people and sort of couch surf and it’s really hard because you feel like a beggar.
I had to leave work really because of it. It was causing too many problems for my job. And going to someone’s house and sharing and then them not liking it and kicking you out on the street again. And you having to find more accommodation and you’ve got kids, you know what I mean, dragging around my daughter anyway. I did end up with depression. I couldn’t concentrate. I had like bouts of times when I couldn’t cope mentally with the situation that was happening more because it was a downward spiral from the depression too, you know. I kept getting worse and worse and the spirals were bigger and bigger. And with people maybe they reacted badly to the way I was being. But I thought I was doing the right thing buying shopping, keeping out of the way, making my stuff really neat because I was in their lounge room, packing up my bed every day so that they could use the couch because I was sleeping on the couch cushions. It was ridiculous. They stole stuff off me too, because I had to leave with what I could take and they kept the rest, even a photo of me and my daughter.
But yeah I was just not being supported by the system. I had nobody out there that I felt supported by and I was homeless and alone in the end. So I even had trouble trying to find people to stay on their couch, especially dragging around my daughter, it was two people. I ended up here so that was alright. I got something that I could sort of be permanent with because I know the landlord personally. He’s a friend of mine since I was 16 so I’ve always been friends with him and I help him pay his mortgage because he’s not really in a bad position.
Others described how social difficulties arising as a consequence of mental health problems and discrimination made maintaining employment and secure housing more difficult. A few participants described how they were asked to leave the place where they had been living.
Michelle eventually moved into a caravan park because she had ‘nowhere to live’. She described how she was evicted after she ‘cracked one day’.
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So I basically, you know they said, “Look you can’t stay here forever. You have to find somewhere to live”. But there was no assistance at all. Like just maybe, “Oh well, try the caravan park”. And stuff like that, so anyway, I had to make all these phone calls and found a, what do they call it, a permanent caravan park? What do they call it, where you can stay for a long time rather than just a holiday one?
So I went into the caravan park and it was just you know a cabin. It was a pretty basic cabin and I stayed there for I think it was around nine months and then you know, still wasn’t taking the medication. I was on the pain medication still, but not taking medication for the voices and yeah, so it just continued until I just couldn’t…
Yeah, I was experiencing, the voices were getting more and more derogatory and one day I just, I just cracked and like I was feeling like cameras were watching and all that kind of stuff. I had that where I felt that there were cameras in the cabin and that you know that there were these seedy men sort of behind it that would just you know watch girls and that lived in the caravan park.
And I even got one of those spy detector type people to come out and paid them like $400 or something to test, to see if there was you know, electronic equipment and things like cameras. And they didn’t, they couldn’t detect anything. So yeah, so anyway eventually I just had this episode.
I cracked one day and started just throwing my crockery out, just smashing it out onto the path in front of the cabin because I could you know, the voices, these male voices were just taunting me and torturing me. And I just cracked and then I got an eviction notice. Yeah, I got an eviction notice because I was, because it was actually quite a peaceful caravan park.
Finding housing
Many people spoke about the difficulty in finding housing. A few people described how they appreciated the support of family members or friends in finding accommodation.
Paddy appreciated the financial sacrifice his parents made when they bought a unit for both himself and his brother to live in.
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I had to move back into our home with my parents and my Mum was a bit aloof to allow me back into their turf but we seemed to get on reasonably well. Wasn’t perfect but not just, like not to do with Mum or Dad but a few mea culpas on both sides. But I don’t know, like yeah it seemed to go pretty well and then my parents have got me this place, not got me this place, they literally sacrificed a lot. I mean they sold the house where they lived and downsized, they got a place in somewhere else. And they got a little unit not just for me but my other brother who has a disability, like a mental health issue. And I live with my brother. So yeah, that’s pretty handy.
And is that going well?
Yeah, it’s going well. Like we had six months into it, we’ve lived there for four years. We’ve lived there for four years and everything have its ups and downs with flatmates, talking to the relationship as a flatmate and a brother.
Some felt that they received little help finding new accommodation during vulnerable times such as leaving hospital or prison. Charlie described being discharged from prison by the police: ‘It was late at night. [They] dropped me at the beach on my own, pretty unwell, no sleep, no food, no cigarettes or anything. It could have been handled better’.
Bernadette described how her father made the decision to end her lease when she was in hospital. She received little support in finding a place to live that could accommodate her children when she was released.
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Apparently at that stage, some time when I was in seclusion, they told my dad that I was extremely unwell and that I’d be unwell for at least six months and that I would be in hospital for probably that long.
So he made the decision on the back of that – and this is like literally within four or five days of me being in hospital – to shut down my lease on my house that I had in [city] and pack up all my things and put them into storage. So I found that out once I got out of seclusion I guess and when I started to try and make arrangements to get before a Mental Health Review Board and get discharged. And my angle was I knew, I always knew I was unwell but I am absolutely able to be treated in the community.
But I had to work obviously with the social workers and things to try and find accommodation. And for me I was trying to get accommodation that I would be able to have my children in. And they were saying to me, “Well, we don’t know that you’re actually capable of looking after your children and we’re never going to be able to find you that sort of housing and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah”. And they offered me a share-house at some point in time and I said, “No I don’t want that”. So I eventually just made the decision that I was going to have to come back to [city] and get accommodation wherever I could and go and stay with an aunt of mine while I tried to sort that out.
And I got released on the third time. And I came back and I had to rent an apartment that was really expensive like, I don’t know, you know, a fully-furnished apartment week-by-week. But I had arranged for that to happen so that I was able to be released and I was eventually released.
Finances
For most people, experiencing severe mental health problems had a negative effect on their financial circumstances. This was usually the result of unstable employment which reduced the amount of income they earned. Several people spoke about relying on social security payments such as the Disability Support Pension, sickness allowances or parenting payments, or on financial support from family members.
A lack of money also affected people’s sense of independence or ability to participate in social activities. For some people, relying on government or family members for money reduced their feelings of autonomy. For others, external management was helpful. Gurvinder said he ‘always had problems paying rent and whatever’ and so had decided to continue having his money managed by a State Trustee. Bernadette said that her parenting payment was cut off after a hospital worker notified Centrelink that she was in an in-patient unit. This was difficult to re-establish later when she was ‘still really sedated’.
Vanessa was ‘frustrated’ when Centrelink cut her payments after doing ‘a couple of jobs’. She also worried about her savings, as despite seeking financial advice, she said she still ‘didn’t understand’ superannuation.
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But what upset me last year was I did a couple of jobs and got $150 – $450 and so Centrelink took $1,000 off me. So, like that was hard, that was hard so I may as well not work.
Like I felt so angry and so frustrated and everything when Centrelink just took $1000 off me and I thought the money in my bank account isn’t really there because it’s there for rates of $1,800. So, you know, they’re forcing you to take your money out and hide it under the bed really and so I find that very frustrating.
I don’t understand about superannuation and stuff and like you lose a lot of confidence, and I know people send you stuff but I tend not to even open it and just put it on one side because I don’t know how to deal with it.
So it just sounds like you might benefit from some advice around your finances
Yes, I went to an accountant and tried to talk to him about stuff and he said it was outside his experiences but I have like about $10,000. I’ve got it in a term deposit and he said I should put it in a deeming account but that’s the only thing he knew. And he said you’re supposed to be allowed to have lots and lots of money but they’re always taking money off me and I just don’t get it.
I went to some public things that they put on but I didn’t understand them and so I’ve just sort of done nothing really but if I spend that little buffer of money I’ll never get it back there and something else might go wrong. I mean, a tree could fall through my roof or something and he said $10,000 isn’t very much money and he didn’t even charge me for talking to him.
Managing financially on a low income was difficult for many people. Some people talked about needing to be ‘thrifty’, while others said saving money was hard, or led to social isolation. Others did manage their money well and appreciated the back-up support and advice they received from their family.
Vanessa described the social isolation that she experienced because of the need to save money to pay for housing repairs.
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I think, to get out of your house and get out and have little outings, I think they’re very important because to me the biggest factor of having a mental illness is the isolation and the stigma and also, you lose your skills. You lose your confidence. So, I don’t know but I think you’ve got to have somewhere to go.
I was here for years on my own driving the neighbours nuts and there’s nowhere to go when you’ve got no money and it’s just awful and it goes on year after year. And when you live on the pension, you know, like I own my own house but I don’t really have money for repairs. If you look up at the ceiling up there I was away and there was an accident, you know, too much water came down and it all came through my house. Then one day I saw a gale and all the palings in the fence were dancing. I just had to get a new fence and, you know, like these are big things.
If I want everything, I go crazy but yeah, I try not to buy too much. I’ve been eating free groceries. That’s the only way I can save money is to go nowhere and do nothing and it’s hard, you know. Yeah, it’s hard.
Niall found the suggestion to save a portion of his disability pension useful. He also appreciated the financial support his father gave where necessary.
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I’m on a Disability Support Pension, but I managed to save $100 of that a fortnight and I’m able to go to New Zealand next month on holiday. So, you know, I’ve been able to – that was my dad’s idea. Now, that was a decision that the carer made, was to put this $100 away a fortnight and I wasn’t too thrilled about it, because I thought, you know, “How am I going to do that? I’m going to have less money”.
But I’ve managed and sometimes I run out of a bit of money, so I’ve got to see him today and he’s got to give me some money. But most of the time it’s alright and I manage and even though it’s been a bit stressful, we have a joint account and I can’t access the money without his signature and that sort of thing, but it seems to work alright.
It’s good, because, it’s good in a way, because I’m saving money now. I wouldn’t get to go on these holidays without it.
