This year’s Black History Month theme, Reclaiming Narratives, empowers Black communities to take control of their own stories and challenge historical distortions This year our Culturally Appropriate Advocacy team discuss narratives around psychiatry and how this effects Black people accessing mental health services.
Reclaiming Narratives
Gaddum’s Culturally Appropriate Advocacy Project (CAAP) works with people from racialised minority backgrounds in Greater Manchester who have mental health needs to provide culturally appropriate advocacy.
Research shows that Black people are 3-5 times more likely to be detained (“sectioned”) under the Mental Health Act in England and Wales. Black people are also more likely to be subject to restrictions and report less say in their care and treatment. Through advocacy we want to ensure patients voices are heard because we know that when people with mental health needs are listened to, they can get the support they need and they recover.
Gaddum’s Culturally Appropriate Advocacy Project (CAAP) works with people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the community and in psychiatric in-patient wards. The mistreatment and oppression faced by many Black people and other marginalized communities in mental health services today are rooted in the early years of psychiatry and its founders.
A look at the history of psychiatry and its treatment of Black individuals reveals disturbing historical distortions, some of which have since been corrected. One such example is Drapetomania, a psychiatric condition created by Samuel Cartwright, used to diagnose enslaved people who fled plantations in the American South.
Cartwright theorised that Black Africans should naturally submit to others, that being enslaved was their natural state, and that attempting to escape must be a sign of mental instability, making the desire to flee enslavement the one and only symptom of Drapetomania.
This disorder, and other disorders like dysaesthesia aethiopica, pathologised the innate human desire for freedom and were created to maintain control over enslaved Black people and justify the actions of enslavers. This diagnosis often meant harsh consequences for slaves as Cartwright believed a “cure” for the disorder was harder work and more whippings.
We know that today, many Black people are pathologised for behaviours, communication style and reactions when in need of mental health support. We believe that all people need trauma informed and culturally appropriate care. We advocate for change to our mental health services to address this.
Our Independent Advocates often have conversations with Black service users about how it feels to be pathologized. Here is Sheryle’s words:
“Sometimes [the psychiatric ward] don’t understand the way I express myself due to being Jamaican. We should have multi-cultural rooms in here that are themed to make everyone realise we have unique celebrated backgrounds. Just to make people think.”
To support Black individuals to reclaim their narratives, the CAAP team holds conversations about race and racism, and works with the Department of Health and Social Care and Greater Manchester NHS Trusts to show how culturally appropriate services are needed for our communities. Through addressing these barriers we aim to reduce admissions, reducing the need for restrictive practices and better health outcomes for Black people with mental health needs.
We want everyone to have access to Culturally Appropriate Advocacy.
Gaddum’s Culturally Appropriate Advocacy service empowers Black individuals by giving them the power to self-advocate, culturally appropriate support, and a safe-space to hold conversations which they otherwise may not have.
If you know someone from a Black or other minority background who has mental health struggles, you can refer them to our Advocacy service.