This month’s British Journal of Psychiatry has a quietly powerful poem by psychiatrist Sean Spence which highlights the sometimes uncomfortable misconnection between the problems we study and the problems we face.

Spence is well-known for his work in cognitive neuropsychiatry although has had a long-standing interest in treating mental health difficulties in those living on the street.

If Homelessness Were Genetic

by Sean Spence

If homelessness were genetic,

Institutes would be constructed

With tall white walls,

And ‘driven’ people (with thick glasses)

Would congregate

In libraries

And mumble.

If homelessness were genetic

Bright young things

Would draft manifestos

‘To crack the problem’

Girls with braces on their teeth

Would stoop to kiss

Boys with dandruff

At Unit discos

While dancing (slowly)

To ‘Careless Whisper’.

Meanwhile, upstairs, in the offices

Secretaries in long white coats

And horn-rimmed spectacles,

Carrying clipboards,

Would cross their legs

And take dictation:

‘Miss Brown, a memo please,

To the eminent Professor Levchenko,

“Many thanks indeed

For all those sachets you sent to me,

Of homeless toddlers’ teeth.”’

If homelessness were genetic

Rats from broken homes

Would sleep in cardboard shoeboxes

Evading violent fathers,

Who broke their bones,

While small white mice

With cocaine habits

Would huddle in fear,

Sleeping in doorways,

Receiving calibrated kicks from gangs of passers-by

(A “geneenvironment interaction”).

If homelessness were genetic

Then the limping man, with swollen feet,

A fever,

And the voices crying out within his brain

Would not traipse

Between surgery and casualty

Being turned away

For being roofless

Because, of course,

Homelessness would be genetic

And, therefore,

“Interesting”.