Profiling mental health needs: what about your Irish patients?

[摘要] In January 2005 the Department of Health published its most recent guidance on how health services should deliver ‘race equality’ in mental health.1 This follows wider concerns about institutional racism in many statutory services, but in particular, responds to the inquiry relating to the death of David Bennett in a medium secure psychiatric unit after being restrained by staff. David Bennett was a 38-year-old African–Caribbean man, and fits well the stereotype many people have, if our university health students are at all representative, of the ethnicity of the people at greatest risk of serious mental health problems. They are often surprised to learn that in terms of both physical and mental health, Irish people have a record as poor as, or worse than, many of the main minority ethnic groups living in England and that this disadvantage persists into second and third generations.2 Irish people are also very regular visitors to their GP, are over-represented among people with the less severe forms of mental health problems,3 and are included in the January report.

[学科分类] 卫生学