News Release, 10 September 2003
The Mental Health Foundation launches Black Spaces, a new report that reveals how the Black voluntary sector provides effective and culturally sensitive mental health services.
Part of the charity's groundbreaking 'Strategies for Living' programme, Black Spaces documents what enables the Black voluntary sector to operate successfully and discovers what is unique about it.
Dr Andrew McCulloch, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation, said: "Black Spaces comes at a crucial time for the development of mental health services with the Department of Health's recent report Inside/Outside admitting that the voluntary sector has led the way in developing culturally sensitive services and that statutory care providers have often failed to follow their example."
"Black Spaces offers a real opportunity for statutory and voluntary mental health services to work together more effectively. The information contained in this report will go along way in helping to develop culturally sensitive and effective mental health services for black and minority ethnic groups in the future."
Toby Williamson, Head of Strategies for Living at the Mental Health Foundation, said: "The seven Black voluntary sector projects that Black Spaces reports on are making a huge impact on the lives of individuals and communities. Their work should be held up as an example of good practice, as well as providing important learning for all those who work trying to meet the mental needs off black and minority ethnic groups."
Black African-Caribbean people in the UK are over-represented in secure psychiatric units and are twice as likely as white people to be diagnosed with a mental health problem but are less likely to access some forms of treatment and care, such as psychotherapy. They are three to five times more likely to be diagnosed and admitted to hospital for schizophrenia.
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