There are many things
that will cause a person to have psychological disorders. The two psychological
disorders that I will be concentrating on are the substance-abuse disorder and
the anxiety disorders. I am informing you on how homelessness, living in a bad
neighborhood, living on low income, and having no education can cause the two
specific disorders. These four things can cause psychological disorders because
they make it difficult to make it through everyday life. These four qualities
make it difficult to be happy and it makes it even harder to provide for
yourself. Especially when you’re older and have a psychological disorder, this
may cause harm to you or someone else.
Being a homeless older person can cause many problems.
One of the psychological problems that kick in when homeless is the anxiety
disorder. Homeless people are anxious for finding their next meal and looking
for a warm play to stay when it’s a cold or a cool place when it’s hot. For
older people, on top of having a psychological disorder, their bodies are
failing from bad nutrition. I know a few homeless people myself and they always
come by my job to see if I can help them out. Most are ashamed to ask but they
have to find a way to stay alive especially in Chicago’s winter. I, myself, was
homeless before for only a little while. I was scared about where my family and
I would live. We were put out of our house and all of our stuff was chucked
into the garbage. We lost so much stuff it was ridiculous and saddening. I was
depressed and everything because we still had to go to school. I probably had
the anxiety disorder and didn’t even know. We didn’t have money for personal
hygiene things or to even wash our clothes. I reached out to my counselors and
they helped me and I began to feel hope. Luckily my mom found some help and we
were put into a shelter and were given food stamps. So I can just imagine the
internal pain and anxiousness of a homeless person who can’t find anything to eat
or a place to stay. The anxiety disorder will eventually turn into something
even worse when your homeless because you’re worrying on how you will survive.
Living in a bad neighborhood as an older or younger
person really affects how you go about your everyday life. Bad neighborhoods
can cause a person to have both the anxiety and substance-abuse disorder. Since
I’ve been living in Chicago, the crime rate has only worsened. In 2012,
according to an article by Renita Young, 192 people were murdered in Chicago by
May 20th on the west and south sides. Just imagine how many more
people were killed because the summer hadn’t even started yet. Worrying about
what might happen will make you anxious. Parents have to watch out for
themselves and their kids, especially when it gets hot because people are
getting shot left and right. Parents don’t want their children to get involved
in gang-related behavior either because that is mostly the cause of people
getting killed in the first place. Everyday it’s a struggle to do anything
because you are constantly looking over your shoulder for danger. In most bad
neighborhoods and most good ones, teenagers are abusing marijuana and smoking
it on a daily basis. This happens only because it is easy for them to get. I
mean they don’t get carded by a drug dealer because their only intention is to
make money. Living in a bad neighborhood could cause young and old people to
use other illegal substances also such as heroine, crack and pills that they
call “molly”. What makes the predicament so sad is that since the neighborhoods
aren’t getting any better, it makes the use of illegal substances worse because
people will feel like they need a certain drug to make them feel calm and
relaxed all the time so that they won’t feel anxious anymore.
Living in a bad neighborhood is the effect of having a
low income. As we already know our income effects how we live, eat, and survive
day by day. Minimum wage barely meets the line for all the things that need to
get done in our daily lives. Like paying rent, paying bills, paying off student
loans, keeping food in the house and things of that nature. This could make a
person have the anxiety disorder. The main concern is how you will pay for
things or how will you make a way? A person may get stressed trying to find
ways to make ends meet and keep things running smoothly. The cost of living has
gone up so high that people are forced to probably get two jobs. For older
people, the problem is paying for medicine and doctor visits because Medicare
doesn’t pay for everything now-a-days. Those hospital bills are really
expensive and could make a person stress out on how to pay the money. People
can barely hold up their homes with the money they are being given. Folks in
the middle and higher social classes may not have to worry because with checks
they are getting paid with they don’t have to worry about making ends meet all
the time. Especially if there is a working husband and wife. Some of the times
they might take a loan out here and there for emergencies but it’s not as bad
as people who have low income. Not for the higher social class though. They
have money to throw around if they’d like.
Having little to no education can affect your life
tremendously now-a-days. In the present day you have to have a degree for
almost every job that pays a decent amount of money. With a person not being
able to get a job to provide for their family can drive them to substance abuse
because it makes them feel a little better and takes them somewhere, mentally,
so they won’t have to worry. That’s only good until their high comes down and
they have to use and use again. Also since the person isn’t educated enough,
they don’t know the side effects of the drug they are using. It could be
harmful to them mentally, physically, emotionally and all they know is that
somebody told them that it makes them “feel good”. Some of the poorer people
can’t afford to go to college and also some middle class families because of
the loans and the out of pocket money that they have pay for their tuitions.
Having no education of certain things, like technology, can affect older people
because they may not know how to work with new technology. It could make them
very anxious since some older people aren’t physically capable of doing things
and then on top of that they can’t comprehend what’s going on in the now. They
could lose the job they’ve had for so many years and could lose benefits also
if they didn’t go up to the retirement age of 67 at their job. This could
really make someone very uncomfortable with themselves because they don’t have
the education of certain things.
With people having different situations in life that could case so many other
psychological disorders, I chose to focus on substance-abuse disorders and
anxiety disorders because they are the most common in what I see in my everyday
life. I also chose them because it fit it in with my own life. I don’t if I had
the anxiety disorder but it sure as h*** felt like it like now that I know that
there is something called an anxiety disorder. No one will go to the doctor
about these disorders because they don’t know that they may have and if they do
they are just afraid. Of what? I do not know. Living off low income, having no
education, homelessness, and living in a bad neighborhood are just some of the
few causes of these psychological disorders that arise in people. It’s kind of
sad that these things happen but most people can’t help their situation,
especially older people. Sometimes it’s harder for them, to get out of unfit situations
than it is for other age groups because they want to be independent and want to
help themselves. They make things harder for themselves because they don’t take
advantage of the help like younger people do.
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