Sadly, the concept of racism is something we’re all familiar with. Everyone more or less knows what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s okay to say and what’s really not. Surface level racism is easy to see and just as easy to call out. But when it comes to that deeply engrained, historical and societally driven unconscious bias level of discrimination, things become less straightforward. But for too long we've been hearing about research that defines this type of prejudice as a key reason why black people in the UK are less likely than the rest of the population to receive the support they need for their mental health. And yet, not all that much seems to be being done about it.
It was recently highlighted by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show that black people in the UK are being failed by mental health services because of ‘institutional racism’. The thing is though, the discriminatory treatment of ethnic minorities with mental health problems isn’t a new thing and, if you think about it, if institutional racism exists at all, it’s not all that far-fetched to recognise its presence in the healthcare system. And yeah, it’s a dangerous and overwhelmingly troubling thing to acknowledge.
A 2014 report by the anti-stigma and mental health campaign Time to Change found that almost half of black and ethnic minority people who they spoke to were discriminated against by mental health staff. The same sentiment was reflected in the 2005 ‘Count Me In’ censuswhich found that black and mixed-race men and women are more likely than the general population to be admitted to a psychiatric unit, and is also the same sentiment that is echoed in the BBC’s findings.
What’s particularly worrying of course, is the existing vulnerability of people who are having to deal with this unacceptable treatment from the very organisations that are in meant to help them. But beyond the immediate, interpersonal effects of this awful and clearly counter-intuitive behaviour towards people with mental health issues, is the cyclical relationship between racism and mental health that, again, seems to be acknowledged but, as the last decade or so of reporting on the topic suggests, very little is being done about.
Talking about mental health is pretty commonplace now, right? I mean the concept of ‘mental health’ in the wide sense of the term.We’re pretty familiar with seeing it in headlines, loads of fantastic organisations are working hard to normalise conversations around anxiety and depression, and it'd be reasonable to assume that attitudes have changed. Millennials are generation therapy for a reason, after all. The trouble with this perception though, is that it comes with a very specific image attached to it. And more often than not, that image is of a middle-class white woman. Now, in no way does this reality negate the immense value in people, women in particular, drawing attention to something that otherwise is brushed under the rug. Neither does it suggest that any one person's problems are greater than anyone elses. But the fact of the matter is that there are few black people who have shared the same stage. And I honestly struggle to name more than a handful of black figures who are anywhere near as vocal or widely championed as their white peers. The black British experience is different, and therefore the effect of that on our mental health is also going to be different too. But clearly, that still isn't quite being addressed properly.
On the one hand, there’s the depressing fact that being black typically means that you’ll be subject to all sorts of racism in many areas of life, and it doesn’t take much to see the correlation between always being treated differently, or as inferior, and developing problems with mental health. There’s research that suggests that African-Caribbean people in the UK are more likely to be diagnosed with severe mental illnesses than any other ethnicity.Last year it was reported that nearly 30% of black British women experience depression. Mental illness within the black population is clearly a thing, statistically.
But then there’s also the stigma around mental health within communities that lends itself to the severity of illnesses found within black men and women – if mental health isn’t something you typically address as ‘normal’, then it’s going to take a hell of a lot longer for you to recognise that there's anything to address. And typically, mental health within the black community, the male black community in particular, isn't well acknowledged. It’s the reason why Stormzy’s candid admission to dealing with depression was so widely celebrated. Finally, we had a black man to break the chain of typically white celebrities, publically opening up about an issue that is just as widely, if not more frequently experienced by his racial community. Finally, we had someone who humanised the otherwise empty and unaddressed statistics that suggest that yes, shock horror, black men are in the UK are vulnerable to mental health problems too.
We champion conversations that normalise mental illnesses as just as important and widely experienced as physical ailments, and even though it’s not always good news, government support for mental health services in the UK seems to have become a frequent feature in media headlines. But what’s missing is action to counter the fact that conducive to the flawed, frustrating cultural depiction of black people as typically aggressive, black men are way more likely than any other group to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, physically restrained and/or face discrimination.
A Department of Health spokeswoman told the BBC: 'We want to make sure that everyone, regardless of ethnicity, age or background, gets the mental health treatment they need. Work to consider reform of mental health legislation will begin to ensure mental health is prioritised in the NHS in England - and in part reflecting concern about the disproportionate rate of detention of black people under the existing system.'
Mental healthcare in the UK has long been under-supported by the governmental powers that be, and institutional racism is so deeply ingrained in our consciousness that sometimes it's even hard for those of us on the receiving end of it to notice that sort of behaviour at play. If you're a member of the black population, those two problems go hand in hand. And while working towards one will definitely help, we can't afford not to address the fact that there are so many levels to this re-acknowledgement of which black people suffering mental illness are being failed by the system. We need more conversation lead people who share the same experiences, we need legitimate legislative action and we need the painful, categorical recognition that just because racism exists in forms that may reach beyond the understanding of the majority, there's so much evidence that shows just how much of an impact it's having on the wellbeing of black communities.
**Like this? You might also be interested in… **
Do Women Of Colour Need To Be More ‘White’ To Secure Employment?
Follow Jazmin on Instagram @JazKopotsha
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.