In Tehran, as in cities across the world, the path to homelessness is rarely a single misstep but a convergence of wounds — personal, familial, and structural — that accumulate until the ground gives way. A 2023 qualitative study, drawing on the testimonies of seventeen individuals living without stable housing, traced these converging forces across two distinct planes: the interior life of trauma, addiction, and psychological struggle, and the outer world of family violence, broken bonds, and unsafe conditions. What the researchers found was not a catalog of individual failures but a map of i
Tehran Study Links Homelessness to Drug Addiction, Family Violence, Psychological Factors
The study documents the lived experiences of 17 homeless individuals in Tehran facing housing insecurity, family violence, substance addiction, and psychological distress.
Homelessness happens because of many things at once, layered and reinforcing.
Mark
Why did they choose to interview exactly seventeen people? That seems like a small number.
Mimi
It is small, but the point was depth, not breadth. They were looking for the texture of why homelessness happens, not a statistical snapshot. Seventeen people, interviewed at length, can reveal patterns that a thousand survey responses might miss.
Mark
And they specifically selected people to get diversity. What kind of diversity?
Mimi
Different circumstances, different pathways into homelessness. Some might have been on the streets for years, others recently. Some dealing primarily with addiction, others with family breakdown. The goal was to hear the full range of how this actually unfolds.
Mark
The study names drug addiction, childhood trauma, and psychological problems as individual factors. But aren't those also social problems in some sense?
Mimi
That's the tension the study is pointing at. Yes, addiction and trauma are deeply social—they emerge from environments, from family systems, from lack of support. But they also live inside a person's body and mind. The study is saying you have to address both the internal struggle and the external conditions that created it.
Mark
Family violence shows up as a cause. Does that mean people are fleeing their homes?
Mimi
Some are, yes. But it's also broader than that—family breakdown, the loss of the safety net that family can provide. If your family relationships are fractured by violence or poor communication, there's no one to catch you when you fall.
Mark
What does "unsafe living environments" mean in this context?
Mimi
Neighborhoods where staying put becomes impossible. Places where the conditions themselves—crime, instability, lack of basic services—make housing unsustainable. You can't stay somewhere that isn't safe.
Mark
So the implication is that you can't solve homelessness by just treating addiction or just providing shelter.
Mimi
Exactly. You have to work on all of it at once. The addiction, the trauma, the family relationships, the neighborhood conditions. That's what they mean by intersectional—it all has to move together.
Der Puls
- Seventeen homeless individuals in Tehran gave researchers an intimate account of how lives unravel — through addiction, childhood trauma, and untreated mental illness that erode the capacity to hold onto housing or relationships.
- Family violence and the collapse of communication within households emerged as forces that actively push people out of their homes, making the street a safer option than the place meant to shelter them.
- The study's urgency lies in its insistence that these factors do not operate in isolation — addiction deepens under trauma, trauma is compounded by violence, and unsafe neighborhoods close off every exit.
- Current policy approaches risk treating symptoms in silos, offering shelter without psychological care or addiction treatment without addressing the family dynamics that fuel relapse and displacement.
- Researchers are calling for coordinated, intersectional interventions that address individual needs and social structures simultaneously — a recognition that no single program can untangle what multiple forces have woven together.
- The study lands as a challenge to policymakers: homelessness in Tehran, as elsewhere, will not yield to partial solutions, and the cost of inaction is measured in lives lived on the margins of the city.
In Tehran, as in cities across the world, the path to homelessness is rarely a single misstep but a convergence of wounds — personal, familial, and structural — that accumulate until the ground gives way. A 2023 qualitative study, drawing on the testimonies of seventeen individuals living without stable housing, traced these converging forces across two distinct planes: the interior life of trauma, addiction, and psychological struggle, and the outer world of family violence, broken bonds, and unsafe conditions. What the researchers found was not a catalog of individual failures but a map of interconnected vulnerabilities, each one amplifying the others — and a quiet argument that any serious response must be as layered as the problem itself.
Homelessness does not arrive from a single direction. A study conducted in Tehran in 2023 set out to trace its actual contours, and what emerged from seventeen in-depth interviews with homeless individuals was a portrait of layered, reinforcing vulnerability — not a simple story of personal failure or social neglect, but both at once.
Researchers spoke with participants across neighborhoods and shelters, selecting for the widest possible range of circumstances. Conversations were recorded with consent, confidentiality was guaranteed, and the work met the ethical standards of Iran University of Medical Sciences and the Declaration of Helsinki. What they heard sorted itself into two distinct but entangled levels.
At the individual level, drug addiction appeared again and again — alongside the long shadow of negative childhood experiences and the weight of untreated psychological distress. Depression, anxiety, and behavioral struggles made it harder to hold onto housing, employment, and the relationships that might otherwise provide a safety net.
But the social and environmental level was equally present. Family violence drove people away from homes that were no longer safe. Communication within families had broken down, severing the bonds that might have anchored someone through a crisis. And the surrounding environment — unsafe living conditions, neighborhoods where danger compounded vulnerability — made staying put impossible.
The researchers' central finding was that these factors do not operate independently. They feed each other. A person carrying childhood trauma may turn to addiction; addiction strains family relationships; family conflict escalates into violence; violence forces displacement into an unsafe environment that deepens every other wound.
The conclusion was direct: reducing homelessness requires working across both levels at once. Treating addiction without addressing family dynamics is insufficient. Providing shelter without attending to psychological distress leaves the underlying architecture of vulnerability intact. The researchers argued for coordinated, intersectional policy — deliberate, simultaneous attention to the individual and the structural — as the only approach equal to the complexity of the problem.
Homelessness is not a single problem with a single cause. A study conducted in Tehran during 2023 set out to understand what actually drives people onto the streets, and what emerged was a picture far more complicated than any single explanation could capture.
Researchers conducted seventeen in-depth interviews with homeless individuals across neighborhoods and shelters throughout the city. They selected participants deliberately to capture the widest possible range of circumstances and backgrounds. Each conversation was recorded with explicit permission, and participants were guaranteed confidentiality and the right to step away at any point. The work was approved by the Ethics Committee of Iran University of Medical Sciences and followed the Declaration of Helsinki standards.
When the researchers analyzed what they heard, a pattern emerged—but not a simple one. The factors pushing people into homelessness operated on two distinct levels, each with its own logic and its own weight.
At the individual level, three clusters of vulnerability stood out. Drug addiction appeared repeatedly in the accounts. So did the weight of negative childhood experiences—the accumulated damage of early trauma that shapes how people navigate the world as adults. And alongside these were behavioral and psychological problems: depression, anxiety, untreated mental illness, the kinds of internal struggles that make it harder to hold onto housing, employment, relationships.
But individual factors alone did not tell the whole story. The social and environmental level mattered just as much. Family violence emerged as a driver—people fleeing homes where they were not safe. Communication breakdown within families, the erosion of the bonds that might otherwise hold people anchored. And the broader environment itself: unsafe living conditions that made staying put impossible, neighborhoods where vulnerability was compounded by danger.
What the study revealed, in other words, was that homelessness is not something that happens to people because of one thing. It happens because of many things at once, layered and reinforcing. A person struggling with addiction might also carry childhood trauma and face family violence and live in an unsafe neighborhood. These factors do not operate independently; they feed each other.
The researchers concluded that addressing homelessness requires policymakers and social planners to work across these different levels simultaneously. It is not enough to treat addiction without addressing family dynamics. It is not enough to provide shelter without addressing psychological distress. The work has to be intersectional—touching individual needs and social structures at the same time, through coordinated effort and deliberate planning. The burden of homelessness, they argued, can only be reduced when both the micro and macro dimensions are tackled together.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
Reducing the burden of homelessness requires policymakers and social planners to address both individual and social factors through intersectional cooperation and targeted planning.— Study authors
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