Institutions Need To Do More To Tackle BAME Mental Health

Students of colour are often faced with more challenges accessing well being services at University.

It is considered that in the UK today, those who come from a Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) background, are more likely to be affected by mental ill health at some point in their life than their white counterparts.

This could be down to the barriers that these communities face in accessing health services and other factors including; socio-economic background, racism, cultural and self-acknowledgement of the cause in the first place.

For me, it was ultimately self-acknowledgement; the fact that I refused to admit to myself that there was a problem. Mental health exists in everybody. Mental health is the all-encompassing condition in regards to our psychological and emotional wellbeing. However mental ill health is something that refers to a wide range of mental health conditions; disorders that affect our moods, anxiety, eating disorders and addictive behaviors.

Since the start of this calendar year, I have been inflicted with numerous challenges. It is the first time that I will be publicly talking about my own personal experience with mental health. However, in doing so, I hope that this can act as assurance and comfort for those who consider themselves to be closed-off, isolated, and perhaps even alone. We have a theme going on within the walls of our university these days, it’s called “It’s okay to not be okay.” — acting as a source of encouragement and assurance for our students, and indeed something that can be shared with the wider community of Bristol too.

Being President of The Students’ Union here at UWE Bristol of course comes with its responsibilities — having to represent all students everywhere at all times, as some would like to believe it to be. It is quite the daunting task to undertake. The year for me started off with a suspension from my role as President for breaching election rules at my students’ union, something that I didn’t realise I had done until the morning after doing it. With this brought a mammoth of self-doubt and crippling anxiety due to it being made public news with a range of news channels and media platforms covering and commenting on the issue.

Away from the public spotlight, within my own personal life, there were also battles to face; the ever-looming separation of my parents back home in Scotland, the emergency hospitalisation of my Grandmother due to a failing lung, to the sudden death of a friend and fellow UWE student whom I had much respect for, who tragically passed away due to a car accident. All these events seemed to happen in one-week intervals throughout the month of January. It was because of these moments that I started to feel on a grand scale the effects of mental ill health.

During these times, it became increasingly difficult for me to open up and talk to anybody about what was going on; if you know me on a personal level, you’ll also know that it is not within my norms to talk about personal problems at all. After much time in isolation, it became a need to get this off my chest, hence I finally turned to my closest friends, whom I have grown to admire even more after sharing such things with them. Since I also come from a religious understanding background, they helped me understand things in a more spiritual way too. Accessing health care services both at university and in the city didn’t seem like an option for me, I just couldn’t imagine they could relate to my cause, my background and my identity. Of course this won’t apply to everyone but I am just sharing my example as a BAME and Muslim individual.

I’m not writing this blog post in an attempt to gain your sympathy, this is the opportunity I have been given to share and spread awareness on mental ill health, and the dangers it could cause if not taken seriously. I strongly feel that in order to move forward in society; the first step should be to talk about it, whether it is your family or friends or anybody whom you can trust. Secondly, we need to provide more inclusive and culturally appropriate development and delivery of mental health services for the BAME community. Only now have I learnt of brilliant local Bristol organisations such as Nilaari, who specialise in providing mental health services for Black and Asian adults. Institutions, such as our university, need to invest in recruiting fulltime BAME Outreach Officers and diversifying their Counselling Services to have at least one BAME Counsellor.

At The Students’ Union, I am actively involved with increasing BAME representation on a full-time staff level basis, which includes our own Counselling service too, as it is important to be reflective of our rich and diverse student body at UWE Bristol. This can only enhance the experience of the average BAME student, knowing that within their own institution there is a place and people to turn to who have a more likely chance of being more understanding of our identity, because for some there could even be language barriers. Furthermore, healthcare providers need access to better training to have more effective communication strategies in order to deliver a tailored service.

The danger is that mental ill health often goes unnoticed until it becomes a more severe case, which in turn results in BME patients being overly represented in acute care, but underrepresented in the counselling or psychiatric therapy level.

I have taken this opportunity to shed light on a stigmatised issue. Whether you are a student at our university, a staff member or a citizen of our City of Bristol, we must do what we can to help, support and care for each other and help those who may be struggling, often in silence.

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