Actor David Harewood's BBC documentary explores why people of colour are more likely to die from Covid-19.

A mixed methods analysis of Black Psychologists’ perspectives and UK mental health Trust data. Presented by Dr Fabienne Palmer BSc (Hons), PGCert, ClinPsyD, CPsychol Monday 26th October 2020 South West EIP Race Equality Project.

At some level, psychiatry (the discipline not just the profession), politicians and policy-makers believe that there is something biologically and culturally determined behind the gross variations in the uptake of the most coercive and socially controlling aspects of mental health provision by Black and Brown people.

Within mental health services, Black people tend to have poorer experiences of mental health services, in terms of access, treatment and outcomes. Institutional racism has been cited as one of the main causes for the differences.

People from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to access community mental health services but are over represented in acute and more restrictive settings. Their experience of services mirrors that of staff from ethnic minority groups: it is often more negative than their white counterparts and many of them report that they have never been asked about what impact structural racism has had on their mental health and generally on their lives.

There is much controversy about why some people have poorer life chances, and specifically poorer experiences of health and mental health. One explanation for ethnic inequalities seen in the mental health system, and in society in general, is racism. The place of racism as a cause of mental illness, or factor that leads to poor health, is contested. This is mainly as the evidence is emerging but also as there are strongly held views, both by people who do not want to talk about racism and those that do.