Citizenship: A Response to the Marginalization of People with Mental Illnesses

The juncture of citizenship and marginalized groups is particularly dramatic when those groups include people who are doubly or triply challenged by homelessness and criminal justice histories. We discuss core themes in the literature on citizenship followed by a review of two of our citizenship research projects: a randomized controlled trial that tested intervention and a community-based participatory research study to develop an individual outcome measurement of citizenship. We then discuss lessons learned from this research, with implications for theory and practice on citizenship in regard to marginalized groups.

Keywords: citizenship, mental illness, homelessness, criminal justice