The Colorado homeless mentally ill: Users and nonusers of services: An empirical investigation of “difficult to treat” characteristics

This study examines the mental health problems of a selected case sample of homeless mentally ill (HMI) men and women in Colorado. The HMI sample was selected to compare those HMI who utilize mental health services (N = 46) with those who do not (N = 50) with respect to psychopathology and to characteristics related to being “difficult to treat.” Findings show that although the HMI current users are slightly more dysfunctional than the non-users, the rates of serious disorders are high among both HMI groups. HMI current users of mental health services, particularly voluntary users, were found to have fewer “difficult to treat” characteristics than the nonusers.