Transcript

YAINA SAMUELS

My name is Yaina Samuels. I work in mental health within the ethnic minority community.

I think the understanding of mental health in minoritised communities is important because of the services that we need to provide. Very often, people can get misdiagnosed and when we look in Wales at the organisations that are working within mental health, many of them are white-led. So we don’t have an ethnic minority leadership there.

Already, people have preconceived ideas of people with mental health. They also have preconceived ideas of Black people with mental health. So you put those two together and there’s a double whammy. And then when you have no leadership at the top, then the cultural awareness and understanding of how to effectively engage with an ethnic minority person who has a mental health problem, that is going to be very difficult.

When we look at the representation or the lack of representation of Black people within Welsh organisations, it’s important for the treatment. It’s important so that people aren’t misdiagnosed. It’s important. So that people aren’t labeled criminals. It could be a mental health problem that somebody is presenting with. From my previous work with working with the community, ethnic minority community in mental health, so many of my clients have been misdiagnosed and labeled criminal and treated as a criminal. And then it’s later found out that the client has mental health problems. So it’s very important that cultural awareness is embedded in organisations’ policies and practices.

So in order to support my work in mental health and build up solidarity, I went into the communities and had conversations for change with them on the topic of mental health. It’s a huge stigma within the ethnic minority community so it was important that I was able to build up relationships of trust. Once those were built up, over a period of a year because you can’t rush these things, then I started to get invited to meetings, forums, meeting with community elders, women’s groups. And the conversations started to open up about the stigma attached to mental health and the barriers which prevent communities from seeking help.