The White-Knuckle Crowd

What Poverty Does to Mental Illness

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

Maybe you’ve seen the looks a homeless man on the corner gets as he converses animatedly with the voices in his head. Or witnessed stares and nervous laughter on a city bus when a woman won’t stop yelling about the government’s plot to take away her millions.

The behaviors that accompany serious mental illness don’t phase me much because…