Craig Anderson’s return to Evanston might not have happened at all.

If he hadn’t decided at the last minute that he wanted to live, if he hadn’t been able to loosen the necktie that he almost strangled himself with in the Skokie woods, if he hadn’t been sent to a housing program instead of a homeless shelter, Anderson wouldn’t be back home to tell his story.

More than 50 years after he was adopted from an Evanston agency, Anderson moved to Evanston last year as part of Housing Options, a program that provides homes and care for mentally ill people. After going through a period when he lived in his car and attempted suicide, Anderson, 52, was committed to a mental hospital, diagnosed with chronic depression and, later, transferred to Housing Options.

“If I didn’t get in the program,” Anderson said, “I would have gone to a shelter and I would have probably killed myself.”

The majority of the 46 people in Housing Options either have been homeless or would otherwise become homeless, said Executive Director Alexander Brown. Housing Options provides renovated apartments for people with severe chronic mental illnesses — people who might fall victim to the vicious cycle of mental illness and homelessness.

Some 20 to 25 percent of homeless people nationwide have a serious mental illness, according to the National Resource Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness. In Evanston, where more than 200 people live on the streets, mental illness is a contributing factor to homelessness, said Jan Klingberg, development director of Connections for the Homeless. She called it a “chicken-or-the-egg” problem, where the struggles of poverty and mental illness build on one another.

“There are some folks who are vulnerable for mental illness,” Klingberg said. “Things might be OK and they could live a normal life. If you put a lot of destabilizing events in the life of someone, then you’ve got a lot of difficulty.”

Klingberg’s program, which receives funds from the city and other governmental and private sources, provides food, shelter and therapy for the homeless and near-homeless in Evanston. She said close to 90 percent of the people admitted to Hilda’s Place, 1458 Chicago Ave., are addicted to drugs or alcohol, and some of them have other mental illnesses as well.

Homeless people with mental illnesses often avoid shelters because the environment can make the illness worse, said Liz Brumfield, a psychiatrist who works with Connections for the Homeless.

“If you’re either profoundly depressed or if you’re psychotic and paranoid, those living situations are very difficult,” Brumfield said.

She said Connections for the Homeless provides shelter for residents with medication and helps them through the confusing process of obtaining social-service benefits, which can help them pay for medications.

“If you live in an alley, how are you going to apply for benefits?” Brumfield said. “You don’t have an address. You don’t have a phone.”

Anderson said the guidance from mental-health programs such as Housing Options helped him get back on his feet.

“Support is one of the biggest things you have to have,” he said. “(Housing Options is) watching to see how you’re doing.”

For Anderson the combined impact of a faltering home business, a divorce and a traumatic reunion with his birth family lead to a flare-up of his depression. He could no longer pay rent and ended up living in his car, driving around all night with no place to park.

“I was just clinically depressed,” he said. “I wasn’t eating. I was isolated in my apartment. I didn’t do anything. I just lay there.

“I wanted to solve the problem, and the only way I saw to do that was by killing myself.”

But Anderson has found another solution. With the help of antidepressants and group therapy, Anderson lives today with two other Housing Options residents in an Evanston apartment. He fixes computers and produces a newsletter for the program and is starting to look for a job.

Anderson said his life turned around when he learned to accept his illness. When he had lived with his birth family prior to his suicide attempt, Anderson viewed his depression as a weakness, not a genetic problem.

“I went off my medication because they said, ‘No, you’re not trying hard enough, you need religion,'” he said. “They were in total denial and still are to this day.”

But Anderson has embraced depression as part of his identity.

“I’m proud that I can say I have a mental illness,” he said.