All Party Parliamentary Group for Mental Health

Notes of meeting: June 2003

Tuesday 24th June 2003

“Black and Minority Ethnic experiences of mental health services”

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the development of proposals to improve the experience of mental health services for BME groups. It included the background, purpose and development of the Government's Inside Outside document. The meeting explored how these proposals are being implemented as well as looking at the development of other initiatives.

James Gbesan, Assistant Operations Manager for Rethink, began by setting the scene about the over representation of young black men within psychiatric institutions, but conversely the under representation of black people in key decision making positions.  He went on to talk about how stigma, racism and culturally insensitive services lead to disproportionate numbers of BME service users being detained under the Mental Health Act and experiencing restraint.

Professor Sashi Sashidharan then spoke about the National Strategy for Ethnicity and Mental Health, which attempts to address some of the issues which James raised.  He restated that there is fifty years of evidence that racism exists within mental health, and that the strategy document from the government entitled Inside Outside puts forward recommendations about resolving the problems which exist.

Discussion then followed about one of the recommendations from the report concerning the engagement of communities in resolving the issues around BME experiences of mental health services.   Professor Sashidharan explained that his interpretation of this is that local people need to be directly involved in policy implementation.  There was discussion that this sort of initiative needs proper resourcing.  Concern was expressed however that this could lead to excluded groups having to be more pushy and vocal in order to get improved services than other more privileged groups.   Local services could also become the “dumping ground” for people seen as problematic.  It was also expressed that within BME communities themselves, there can be a low tolerance of mental illness, and we should not just expect initiatives to just roll out without taking this into consideration.

An additional comment was made about how access to the newer, more expensive medication for mental illness is much less for Afro-Caribbean service users.  Much discussion also centred on the purpose of the government document Inside Outside, as it is not connected with any targets.  It is also not known how far the document has been circulated and there is no way of tracking whether the recommendations are taken on board.  It was suggested that one way to address this would be to put forward a parliamentary question.

It was suggested that the Group may like to consider putting a submission in to the Social Exclusion Unit about people with mental illness and employment, which is consulting over this summer.

Members present: Dr Lynne Jones MP, Lord Alderdice

Other organisations: Martin Ball (Maca), Prof. Nick Bosanquet (Imperial College), Paul Corry (Rethink), Adrian Delemore (Justice for Patients), Shazia Ghani (Outward), Caroline Hawkings (Turning Point), Sam Irive (Maca), Martin Aaron (JAMI), Sue Mason (Janssen-Cilag Ltd), Sheree Parfoot (CAPITAL), Vats Patel (Janssen-Cilag Ltd), Lucy Widenka (Rethink)

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