Hidden racism
We’re in the middle of a mental health crisis – one that ’s causing generations of damage. But it ’s not the one hitting headlines each day. Natalie Morris investigates…
When Aisha goes to see the doctor, she’s prepared. Wearing her thickestskin,sheremindsherself not to take everything they say seriously. She knows she could very well be dismissed. But also, if she tells them the full truth –how she’s really feeling – that could have long-term, terrifying consequences for her future. She rehearses what to say, unsure of how she’ll be received and, ultimately, treated.
It often feels like she’s tottering along a tightrope; one misstep and she’ll tumble into the unknown. The pressure of navigating these unique complexities of the healthcare system as a woman of colour, when she’s already carrying the mental load of an eating disorder, is too much. Aisha is one of the millions at the forefront of a simmering mental health crisis that so fewpeople are talking about.
The statistics are just the start of the story. Black adults have the lowest mental health treatment rate of any ethnic group – at 6% compared with 13% in the white British group – despite a higher risk of mental illness. Racially minoritised women are less likely to get help for an eating disorder. That’s on top of the stats showing how Black, Asian and ethnic minority patients are being let down by the healthcare system in general. But is anything being done? We set out to meet those directly affected to find out…
‘NO ONE TOOK IT SERIOUSLY’
When Aisha was 15, she caught a bad chest infection while caring for her sick grandmother and lost a lot of weight. ‘It spiralled from there,’ she says. ‘I’m mixed-race, Black and South Asian, and I started puberty early. So I was already conscious about my body. When I lost weight, suddenly everyone was telling me how good I looked.’
As she became fixated on looking a certain way, her eating became disordered, affecting every single part of her life. She struggled to concentrate at school. Her friendships faded as she withdrew into isolation. Her body was changing rapidly and her weight was dropping. But still, it took two years for her to receive any sort of medical intervention. ‘Because of the way weight loss looks on my body, I didn’t look unwell and wasn’t technically underweight – according to the BMI scale – for a long time,’ she adds. ‘No one took it seriously. There isn’t enough understanding that eating disorders look different on different bodies.’
It wasn’t until Aisha’s friends raised the alarm with her teachers that she ended up getting help and was referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). This was not a positive experience for Aisha. ‘The main thing I remember is a lot of judgment and blame,’ she says. ‘I was told
