Faith, race equality groups alarmed over mental health ward squalor

Church, faith and race equality groups have condemned the catalogue of failures in mental health services revealed by the Mental Health Act Commission's new report.

The biannual report, entitled Risks, Rights and Recovery, has brought to light the vermin and cockroach infestations on wards, and broken, dirty and inadequate toilet and bathroom facilities within mental health hospitals.

Along with the unsanitary conditions, this new report has found that 37 per cent of wards are running at 100 per cent occupancy, and that the problem of high rates of bed occupancy in acute wards is worse in urban areas, with almost half of all acute wards in London having more patients than beds.

The report highlights the over representation of African Caribbeans in acute wards, a trend that has raised concerns among race equality groups that the black community are bearing the brunt of the appalling conditions.

The report warns that detention rates of black people are as much as four times higher than their white counterparts, and that, when in the system, they are receiving disproportionately higher rates of coercive treatment.

"We do not see the radical changes needed address the double and treble deprivation faced by minority communities who use these services. We have to see action so that racism is eliminated," Lord Herman Ouseley, former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality said.

Pastor Desmond Hall, chair of Christians Together in Brent, said: "This report again makes it clear that too many mental health services are not fit for purpose and something drastically needs to be done.

"It is black people who are overrepresented in the acute settings and have to suffer these indignities. They are never in these places by choice; they are sectioned and then have to stay there."

Findings have revealed the routine use of high-dose antipsychotic medication and that recipients are twice as likely as the rest of the population to die prematurely.

"To learn that there is an over use of coercion, using control and restraint as well as placing patients in seclusion rather than offering talking thereapies shows the failure of any strategies to address the inequalities in treatment and care of black people in mental health settings," said Matilda MacAttram, director , Black Mental Health UK.

She added that lessons had to be learned from the death of the black 38-year-old psychiatric patient David Bennett, who died after being held face down for 25 minutes by as many as five nurses in a Norwich secure unit.
A high profile inquiry into his death led to a call for new standards on the use of force to restrain patients.

"The last thing we should be reading ten years after the death of David Bennett is that black patients are being routinely forcibly restrained. There needs to be a commitment from the highest level to address this situation. If the Government do not show this by allocating adequate resources to this issue - then it is clear that they really do not care."