BAME Experiences of Mental Health - Research from Universities of Bristol, Glasgow and Keele

BAME Experiences of Mental Health A storyboard

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Why do people from ethnic minority communities continue to have poorer access, experiences and outcomes in mental health care despite 40 years of evidence highlighting inequalities? If we have the evidence, why does nothing change?

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Researchers from the University of Bristol reviewed ALL the published and unpublished evidence on experiences of communities, service users, and mental health professionals.

Here’s what was found.

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People from ethnic minority communities are already at higher risk of mental health issues due to experiences of social, economic and racial oppression. These experiences disempower individuals and do not allow space for vulnerability.

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The system itself is seen to be based on a rocky biomedical eurocentric foundation that locates mental illness in the individual, rather than in the conditions that individuals find themselves in, and is unable to provide person-centred care to ethnically-diverse patients.

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Everyone in the mental health ecosystem including carers, service users, psychiatrists, nurses and therapists find themselves battling against this system to receive or provide appropriate care.

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When individuals experience mental ill health, they do not feel like the current model of care can help them. Services are perceived to be useless. Communities do not feel like it is worth taking the risk to access a service where they are not seen as a whole person, and where they fear they may be harmed by Eurocentric, racist, and biomedical approaches to care and treatment. Stigmatising diagnoses threaten the identities of individuals, families and communities. As a result they enter the service as a last resort.

BME Experiences of Mental Health

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Service users experience poor listening, disempowering clinical encounters, retraumatisation, violence, inequitable treatment and overreliance on medication.

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Services are experienced as a form of epistemic injustice and violence. These experiences exacerbate feelings of distress in patients.

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Services are described as Eurocentric and old fashioned and seen to perpetuate racial injustice through the pathologisation of cultural behaviours.

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Professionals including psychiatrists feel inhibited in a system where it does not feel safe or acceptable to talk about religion or spirituality with their patients without being judged by their colleagues. And they feel silenced when they witness racism in diagnostic and treatment decision-making.

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Service users, carers, and mental health professionals feel that a radical change is needed. Service users value non-judgemental, understanding and culturally-capable practitioners; talking therapy and trauma-informed therapy.

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There is a need for a new model of care that better reflects the needs of ethnically diverse patients. This requires statutory services to share their power and acknowledge the lived experience and expertise of service users and the third sector. These organisations provide safe, non-stigmatising spaces for expression of emotional distress, and are more responsive to oppressive causes of illness.

This includes taking a holistic and empowering approach to assessment, care, treatment and recovery.

BME Experiences of Mental Health

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So what’s next?

To find out more about how to improve services for ethnically-diverse communities, see our recommendation report at the link here.

BME Experiences of Mental Health

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