Can perceived racism explain the over representation of Black people within the mental health care system in the UK? Black people (of African and African Caribbean descent) are 2-5 times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses than their counterparts from other ethnic minorities in the UK. However, the symptomology of psychotic illnesses and dissociative experiences are difficult to differentiate.
Interestingly, black people detained under the Mental Health Act (1983/2007) are more likely to give perceived racism as the cause of their emotional distress than their counterparts from other ethnic groups. (Gilvarry et al. 1999; Cooper et al., 2008) However, there is very little indication in the literature as to how perceived racism might exert its effect on black people’s mental health.
VADM Centre for Ethnic Minority Mental Health constructed and tested a theoretical model that related mental representations that might be indicative of the subjective experience of racism, with consequential racialised body image disturbance, dissociative experiences, and low global self esteem.
If racism is a common experience for black people in the UK, there should be evidence of its impact on mental health within a non-clinical population in the UK. A web-based questionnaire comprised of the Dissociative Experiences Scale II (DESII), Object Relations and Social Cognition Scale of Racial Identity (ORSCRIS), Racialised Body Image Disturbance Scale (RBIDS) and Rosenberg’s Self Esteem Scale(RSES), was used to collect the data.
As predicted, mental representations indicative of the subjective experience of racism were found to be directly related to racialised body image disturbance, dissociative experiences, and low self esteem that could occur as a consequence of race-related incidents.
However, the best predictors of dissociative experiences in black people overall were low self-esteem, mental representations of indirect experience of racism, low academic achievement, young age, and racialised body image disturbance, and the predictors varied according gender and ethnicity.
Author: V. De Maynard, Clinical Director at the Centre for BME Health
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