‘I had no voice’: black mental health patients on surviving a care system they say is racialised

It has been more than four decades since Devon Marston, a 66-year-old community organiser and musician, was taken to a psychiatric hospital where he was restrained, injected and forced to take medication. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

“Everything was said around me and about me, but no one asked me how I was doing,” he said. “I had no voice, and there was no one to say: ‘Don’t do that to him,’ or: ‘Listen to him, hear what he has to say.’”

The experience had a profound impact on his life and put him on a path to campaign for better care for minority ethnic people experiencing mental distress. However, progress has been painfully slow.

“Nothing has changed. Everything is still the same – only it’s more covered up now by clauses in the Mental Health Act that make it look fair but the equality and justice are not there,” he said.

The most recent data paints a frightening picture. Findings from the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) latest report show that the number of adults sent for very urgent mental health care from crisis teams more than doubled between 2023 and 2024.

The report, published on Thursday, also raised concerns about the overrepresentation of black people being detained under the act, finding they are 3.5 times more likely to be detained than white people.

The damning report warned that people are becoming more unwell while waiting for help and are stuck in a “damaging cycle” of hospital readmission.

Read full story

Source: The Guardian, 13 March 2025