An Inclusive Mental Health Service Creates a Safe Space for Everyone.

 

The Centre for Mental Health has published the third briefing from its on-going commission for equality in mental health chaired by former Disability UK chief executive Liz Sayce.

 

Previous Georgia have focussed on the determinants of mental health and access to support services.

 

This has seen them highlight issues such as high levels of PTSD in the African -Caribbean community and children from the poorest 20% of UK households being four times more likely to have a serious mental health problem by the age of eleven.

 

Previous briefings have also suggested improvements to how mental health services are delivered. These include building stronger links with community groups and a greater role for peer sport groups.

 

The remit for the third briefing states that 'an inclusive mental health service creates a safe space for everyone, in which past discrimination can be redressed and support is offered'.

 

Building on the work done for other publications the briefing identifies large inequalities in services offered to people with mental health issues.

 

These relate to interconnected issues of age, gender, income, and specific ethnicity such as membership of the Roma and Traveller communities.

 

As a result, people with the most serious conditions are at risk of being offered services that are 'the least effective, the least relevant and, for some, the most coercive'.

 

The briefing recognises some of the steps that have been taken by the NHS to improve mental health services. These include implementing the Advancing Mental Health Inequalities initiative and the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework, both of which were recommended by the independent Mental Health Act review.

 

The briefing says that if 'fully implemented and adequately resourced, these two initiatives will improve people's experience of mental health care nationwide '.

 

The briefing makes recommendations for how mental health service providers can address issues of inequality, these include, valuing lived experience through co-production and adopting more culturally aware models of service delivery.

 

The commission will publish its full report on 12th November.