Black mental health: community and conversations

As a community, Black people are disproportionately affected by ill mental health and often face negative experiences when it comes to mental health treatment. These inequalities affect Black people along the entire care pathway from access to diagnosis, assessment, treatment and recovery. 

In a 2025 survey of Black people in the UK found that: 

"People described stigma as one of the main barriers to accessing mental health services – both in terms of the way communities often viewed mental illness as a sign of weakness or shame, and past experiences that have led to distrust in services. This was also reflected in the findings of the Ipsos survey, where professionals reported that cultural stigma can lead to a reluctance to seek help, disclose symptoms and engage with medicine. Differing cultural beliefs and practices related to mental health and wellbeing can also lead to misunderstandings and misdiagnoses."

 

The state of health care and adult social care in England 2024/25 - Care Quality Commission

We also know that: 

This is why it is vitally important that we create spaces within our community to have discussion about mental health. Some of the ways in which we can do this include.

These are just some of the ways that we can begin to destigmatize discussions on the topic of mental health. It's important when creating these spaces and having these conversations that we make sure to bring in everyone, in particular those from older generations may struggle more than those from younger generations to open up about mental health for a number of reasons including intergenerational trauma and generations of conversations around mental health being deeply stigmatised. It is vital to recognise that across the diaspora the challenges faced cannot be fixed overnight, having more conversations as a community about mental health will require small steps for progression and change. 

Supporting your own mental health 

As important as it is to have conversations about mental health with your community you must also be able to have conversations and check-ins with yourself. Looking after your own mental health and wellbeing is vital. Across the website there are a bunch of resources for looking after yourself including: 

• Our best mental health tips

• Self-care tips

• Look after your mental health

Another key way to understand our own mental health as people from the diaspora is to look at the context in which we find ourselves currently. This includes historical factors that shape how Black people approach mental health and resilience and how that still has an impact in current day through intergenerational trauma, medical racism and other means. For more on this you can read my previous piece titled: Black mental health and resilience.

Another tool that we can use is called the 'Tree of Life' - it is a strengths-based tool (looking at our individual strengths and resources rather than concentrating on vulnerabilities) that we can use to map out the narrative of our life and support our mental health and wellbeing. The model uses a tree to tell our life story with each part of the tree symbolising a different aspect:

It is important to know and look after ourselves so that we can be an active and contributing member of our community. While the tools and methods described above are great ways of helping ourselves there may come a time when we need more specific support from experts and it's important that we recognise when we might need this help and how we can approach dealing with mental health service providers. 

Getting support from service providers

It can often feel quite daunting to seek support when you need it and we know that Black people often face worse outcomes when seeking said support. Recognising when you need help and taking the steps to seek out support services is an incredibly brave thing to do. Here are some things that are good to know when seeking support as a Black person: