D'Sa, Saskia and Foley, Deirdre and Hannon, Jessica and Strashun, Sabina and Murphy, Anne-Marie and O'Gorman, Clodagh (2021) The psychological impact of childhood homelessness- a literature review. Irish Journal of Medical Science, 190, pp. 411-417.
In August 2019, 3848 children in Ireland were faced with emergency homelessness [1]. In recent years, lack of affordable housing, unemployment and shortage of rental properties have been the primary driving factors for the potentially devastating impact of familial homelessness in our society [1]. Our aim was to evaluate current knowledge on the psychological impact of homelessness in children. Using the PRISMA model, we performed a review of the currently available literature on the psychological impact of homelessness on children. This concept was explored under two different categories-'transgenerational' and 'new-onset homelessness'. Hidden homelessness was also explored. Our literature review revealed several psychological morbidities which were unique to children. This includes developmental and learning delays, behavioural difficulties and increased levels of anxiety and depression [66, 77, 40, 81, 42]. This has been demonstrated by poorer performance in school testing and increased levels of aggression. Anxiety in children within this cohort has been shown to peak at time of dispersion from their stable home environment [67]. Our study highlights violence, aggression and poor academic learning outcomes to be just some of the key findings in our review of homelessness in childhood, worldwide. Unfortunately, there has been minimum research to date on paediatric homelessness within the context of the Irish population. We anticipate this review to be the first chapter in a multipart series investigation to evaluate the psychological morbidity of paediatric homelessness within the Irish Society.
F Concepts in psychology > Emotion (anxiety / joy)
F Concepts in psychology > Psychological stress / emotional trauma / adversity
G Health and disease > State of health > Mental health
L Social psychology and related concepts > Physical context, location or place > Housing
MA-ML Social science, culture and community > Social condition > Homelessness
T Demographic characteristics > Child / children
T Demographic characteristics > Homeless person
T Demographic characteristics > Child of person who uses substances
VA Geographic area > Europe > Ireland
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