The muddle of institutional racism in mental health [Commentary]

The murder of George Floyd has reinvigorated the call for anti‐racism across the Global North, and mental health bodies have joined this political moment. Yet, discussions of racism in mental health are nothing new (Bailey et al., 2017; Fernando, 2017; Fernando et al., 1998; McKenzie & Bhui, 2007; Nazroo et al., 2020; Richards, 1997). Certainly, the COVID‐19 pandemic has revealed the extent to which racial inequalities play a detrimental role in health outcomes (Nazroo et al., 2020). The point of this commentary is not to summarise the works on racism and mental health. Rather, the following is a reflection on the hurdles of anti‐racism in mental health, as situated within a neoliberal order. It will outline the challenges in addressing racism as a dynamic process in allegedly post‐racial world—racism without racists (Bonilla‐Silva, 2017).
Given these structural inequalities, scholars increasingly underline how anti‐racist praxis in mental health must consider macro‐level policies (Came & Griffith, 2018; Nazroo et al., 2020). The focus in this commentary will be the Prevent policy, the UK's counter‐radicalisation duty and a wing of the nation's counter‐terrorism strategy. [...]

© 2021 The Author. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL (SHIL).
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This article is part of the Extended Special Section on race and ethnicity in issue 43:8 (September 2021)