Theresa May needs to hear what it’s like to be black and mentally ill in Britain
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Version 0 of 1. The stigma and the social and economic exclusion which often accompany the challenge of living with mental illness is borne out by official figures, which show that 2.3 million people with a mental health condition are out of work. While a commitment to removing mental health stigma is to be welcomed, much more needs to be done to help those in the UK’s African Caribbean communities, who often deal with negative perceptions surrounding mental health issues. The home secretary Theresa May will be co-chairing a roundtable with the black mental health charity BMH UK this week, where policing minister Mike Penning and a number of leading figures in the policing and mental health sector will look at measures to improve the way mental health is treated in Britain’s black communities. These will include: Ending the police presence on locked inpatient wards The tragic cases of both Kingsley Burrell and Olaseni Lewis raise concerns about the perception and treatment of patients in the care of some health providers. And such cases are not isolated. There is a lack of transparency on the extent of police involvement when managing those in crisis or distress on locked wards. Ending the use of Tasers on inpatient wards Two fatalities of physically healthy men after they were Tasered by officers in December last year raises questions over the assertion that Tasers are safe. BMH UK’s submission to the London assembly police and crime committee’s inquiry into arming the Met with Tasers warned that, for people who use mental health services in particular, these firearms could prove lethal. Theresa May’s commitment to make public national data on the use of Tasers, including details on ethnicity and mental health, is a recognition of this concern within government. However, the practice of health staff calling officers on to hospital wards to “subdue” patients with a Taser raises serious human rights concerns. The decision of some health providers to draw up protocols on the use of Tasers on hospital wards is a step too far, and indicative of a culture that urgently needs to change – compassion, not coercion, should be the default for health services. Related: Detention of mentally ill people in police cells needs to end, say MPs Ending the use of prone restraint in hospitals There have been a number of high-profile inquiries, reports, training and guidelines that have indicated the dangers of prone restraint, and it has been recognised that racial stereotyping has been a contributory factor in at least some deaths in custody resulting from restraint. While we welcome care minister Norman Lamb’s drive to end deliberate face-down restraint through new guidance, BMH UK would like to see the next government commit to outlawing the use of prone restraint in line with the UN convention against torture. The right to advocacy for those in detention needs to become a reality For significant numbers of people from the UK’s African Caribbean communities detained in psychiatric settings, this is a big concern. Independent mental health advocates were established under the 2007 Mental Health Act to ensure that those who are subject to detention under the act are supported in the exercising of their rights in detention. But research, and the experience of many on locked wards is that they do not get access to effective advocacy, and in far too many cases are not even informed of this right. End the ban on mobile phones on inpatient wards The blanket rules in mental health services that restrict or ban use of internet access or mobile phones was flagged up as a concern in the Care Quality Commission’s annual report on the use of the Mental Health Act. This report states that “such practices may be a breach of patient’s human rights as Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and should not be the norm for those detained in a ‘place of safety’”. End the use of community treatment orders Also known as psychiatric asbos, they bind patients by law to take antipsychotic medication as a condition of their release from hospital, and again are disproportionately used against black patients. The consensus among those affected by them who have contacted BMH UK is that this provision hinders rather than helps recovery. It extends the reach of psychiatric care into the community, which some patients say increases stigma. Cancer screening for those living with a diagnosis of schizophrenia Cancer is one of the leading causes of death among people who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and data shows that a very large African-Caribbean patient population is overrepresented in this group. Implementing the recommendations made by BMH UK and Cancer Black Care’s report on improving cancer screening for this group, would help in addressing the health gap between people detained in mental health settings, whose life expectancy is still nearly 20 years less than that of the general population. |