Imagine, for a moment, waking up in a different place, like a room with dirty walls and rats running along the floor boards, or a very large room with a canopy bed and an exquisite chandler hanging from the center of the room’s ceiling.
Then you find out that you are a different age, maybe a different gender.
You might discover you have schizophrenia or an eating disorder that is not a result of you thinking you are fat, but your family is too poor to provide food or you have an overabundance of food that you consume too often.
Whatever life it is you wake up to, it turns out that this life at one time was only a scenario, one where you might have felt sorry for the person living it, or even surprised people actually live that way.
Either way, imagine having to live this life for a week or if you can even survive depending upon the circumstances.
Socio-cultural and socio-economic statuses are factors that have shaped us throughout our lives as of now.
If unfamiliar with these terms, socio-cultural and socio-economic determinants are fixtures in our lives such as: place of birth, type of parents, social class, gender, social expectations such as marriage, children, etc.
There are so many factors of our lives that influence us, and many of these are out of our control.
Many people I know automatically assume that people who are homeless are alcoholics, drug addicts or just bums – but in reality there are honest, hard working people whose lives have been turned upside down by factors they could not control.
Also, if you really think about it, drugs and alcohol. Factors that can force a person to spin out of control.
It is not always just a self-esteem problem for someone’s life to spin out of control, but also something that has physically, emotionally, and cognitively taken a toll on one’s body.12