Urban communities can cause problems for mentally ill people.

Poor mentally ill people are forced to inhabit dirty, over crowded, cramped, unsanitary slums.

It tends to be relatively more expensive to live in cities so families struggle more with the cost of looking after a mentally ill person. This means they may kick the mentally ill person out of their home sooner when they can no longer afford to look after them any more.

Also, with a massive pressure on living space, mentally ill people often have their rooms rented out and they are forced to sleep outside the family homes.

With psychiatric hospitals for the whole country usually based in cities, governments don’t feel the need to invest in mental health in these areas, and especially not in community mental health care.

These prison-like psychiatric hospitals are where mentally ill people are usually taken straight away when illnesses first develop. When they are released, there is no support for them and if they aren’t accepted by their family they are left to become destitute.

Even though the psychiatric hospitals are within the same city, getting to them on a regular basis can still be a problem. Transport is expensive and often difficult if a person has a serious mental illness. Bus drivers often won’t let a mentally ill person on-board so a private taxi is the only option. This journey can be very costly so the regular monthly trip to the psychiatric hospital to collect medication is out of the question.

With high migration and abject poverty, some communities within cities can have weaker community links than rural areas. This means that there is little informal support for mentally ill people, such as donating money and food, as people do not feel responsible for each other.

Mentally ill people can then be left to fend for themselves in this harsh environment and destitution is a common result.