A new Care Quality Commission report into mental health care in England has found a doubling of crisis referrals in a year. The report also raises concerns about the overrepresentation of black people being detained under the Mental Health Act act, finding they are 3.5 times more likely to be detained than white people.
This article tells the stories of Devon and Tiwa who both believe their race influenced the shortcomings in the care they received, in Devon’s case 40 years ago. He said: “Nothing has changed. Everything is still the same – only it’s more covered up now by clauses in the Mental Health Act that make it look fair but the equality and justice are not there.”
The chief executive of Mind, Dr Sarah Hughes, said: “The common threads between Devon and Tiwa’s stories, which span several decades and transcend generations and genders, show how far we still have to go on stamping out racism in mental health care.”
While Hughes welcomes the CQC report, saying it shows some positive early progress on implementing the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework, “it is ultimately more damning evidence of the barriers that people from racialised communities face while trying to get help and recover”.
Read more here.
