Some facts
- People from Black African and Caribbean communities are 40% more likely than white
British people to come into contact with mental health services through the criminal
justice system, rather than being referred from GPs or talking therapies.

-Black adults are more likely than adults in other ethnic groups to have been detained
under a section of the Mental Health Act.

-White British adults are more likely to receive treatment for mental health problems
than adults in other ethnic groups (13.3% for white British adults versus 6.3% for Black
adults, who have the lowest treatment rate).

In addition, people of Black African and Caribbean heritage:-
• Are disproportionately subjected to use of section 136
• Have longer average lengths of stay in hospital
• Have higher rates of repeat admission
Have higher rates of seclusion

• Are up to eight times more likely to be placed on Community Treatment Orders
(CTOs)
• Are less likely to be offered psychological therapies
• Have higher drop-out rates from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for psychosis

-Black Caribbean young men are three times more likely to have been in contact with mental health services in the year before they committed
suicide than their White counterparts, and their suicides were more likely to be considered
preventable.

-Male Black African psychiatric inpatients are twice as likely to commit suicide as White psychiatric inpatients

-Black Caribbean and Other Black groups have higher than average rates of detention under s37/41 of the Mental Health Act

-Despite constituting only 2.8% of the service user population and only 3.1% of the population of England, 16.2% of people on Community
Treatment Orders on 31st March 2013 were from the Black or Black British group

-Black and other BME prisoners are under-represented in prison mental health team caseloads and within services that may prove beneficial, such as drug court initiatives and
Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programmes.

There are a large number of well documented cases of deaths in black men with mental health
problems who were under the custody of or the restraint of police officers. These include Roger
Sylvester (1999), Sean Rigg (2008), Olaseni Lewis (2010) and Leon Briggs (2013) 1/2

in police custody having been detained under s136 of the Mental Health Act.Casework conducted by Inquest has shown that a disproportionate number of
people with MH problems who die in or following police custody following the use
of force are from BMEcommunities 2/2

In any given year 20% of children and young people are said to have a MH problem but there is no data available about how many
are from BME backgrounds. Young people from some BME groups are disproportionately over-represented in the youth justice system, social
1/2

services and looked-after provision, exclusion
from school and educational underachievement 2/2

Nearly 75% of 7-year-old Pakistani and Bangladeshi children and just over 50% of black children of the same age were living in poverty in 2010. About 25% of white 7-year-olds were classed as living in poverty at that time