Reckoning with complexity: the intersection of homelessness and serious mental illness, and its implications for nursing practice

Persistently high levels of homelessness are a symptom of deeply unequal societies. The disproportionately adverse health‐related outcomes observed in homeless populations in developed countries—including their high morbidity, mortality and disability rates—constitute a public health and a human rights emergency (Aldridge et al., 2018). Homelessness is often aptly conceptualized as the socio‐economic sequela of concomitant forms of social exclusion such as poverty, housing exclusion, institutionalization, interpersonal violence, residential segregation, socio‐political exclusion and others. Homelessness and co‐occurring disadvantage can be profoundly disruptive biographical experiences that emerge from intersecting axes of inequality.