Health and social aspects of homelessness

The aim of this overview study is to highlight the issue of homelessness in connection with selected health and social aspects. We deal with psychological and physical health, homelessness and substance abuse (alcohol, drugs). Existing studies point to the fact that, among the homeless, there is a higher psychiatric morbidity than among the general population. The situation is identical regarding physical health. Substance abuse is also more common among the homeless than among the general population. In this study, we used the current academic articles listed in Scopus and PubMed to start with. We searched for them entering the keywords “homeless” and “health”. In 2015, Scopus published 6670 articles on this topic. In PubMed, we found 1780 scientific articles, regarding the keywords, published in the last 5 years. In connection with this topic, we also drew from the current academic bibliography available on the Czech market and from the website of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of the Czech Republic.