Showing papers by "David A. Snow published in 1988"
TL;DR: The authors argued that the prevalence of mental illness among the homeless has been exaggerated and pointed out that this view deflects attention from the more pervasive structural sources of homelessness, and argued that their findings at best yield a "lower boundary estimate" whereas his findings yield a best guess estimate that is considerably higher and more consistent with other estimates.
Abstract: In an earlier paper in this journal (Snow et al., 1986), we presented and discussed two data sources that called into question the typification of the homeless as mentally ill. We also argued that this view deflects attention from the more pervasive structural sources of homelessness. James D. Wright (1988), in his comment on our paper, agrees that the prevalence of mental illness among the homeless has been exaggerated, but he suggests that we have erred in the other direction. Specifically, he contends that our findings at best yield a "lower boundary estimate," whereas his findings yield a "best guess estimate" that is considerably higher and more consistent with other estimates. It is possible that our research produced a lower boundary estimate, but we do not fully agree with his objections to that research. Additionally, we contest the claim that his findings indicate a true incidence rate that is at least two to three times higher than what we found.
27 citations