Schizophrenia and psychosis: the magical and troubling disappearance of race from the debate

Abstract

On the 27th November 2014, the British Psychological Society released a report, written by the Division of Clinical Psychology, entitled Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia. The report outlined a number of features identified by professional psychological consensus as being salient in the process of understanding the experience of psychosis and schizophrenia. Amongst these were; defining psychoses, possible and perceived causes, formulating help seeking and support strategies, and the actions that need to be taken on the part of mental health services to ensure people who suffer from these symptoms are supported. At one level, this is a welcome, insightful and generally useful report, which explains voice hearing phenomena in a reassuring way. It de-stigmatises hearing voices by locating it at both an individual level, and the societal, collective and service provision level. This situates the responsibility for understanding, empathising and supporting psychoses sufferers within a wider constellation of factors. There is clearly an attempt at providing clear, accessible ways to understand the very many sociological and contextual factors that contribute to the social, cultural and political construction of ‘mental illness’ or ‘mental health’. All the more reason that the complete omission of such vital societally embedded issues such as race and ethnicity prompted alarm amongst a variety of professionals who have worked in the area of mental health and diversity. Objections and concerns were raised in a letter (http://www.sumanfernando.com/news. html) to the editor of this report, expressing concern that the report had completely neglected an important feature of British society: race and ethnicity.