Addressing Racism in Mental Health Services: Steps for Anti-Racist Practice

How do you deal with racism? Have you sought professional help to manage racial trauma? If so, were your needs adequately met by the healthcare system? How does racism perpetuate in mental health services?

In Sweden, mental health resources for race-based traumatic stress are limited, with only a few mental health practitioners offering racial-trauma-informed practice. Alongside this underrepresentation, mainstream psychotherapies stem from Western Eurocentric ideologies, which tend to pathologise societal problems, reinforce power dynamics between the patient and therapist, and undermine the representation of culturally diverse practices. Racial discrimination and gate-keeping only continue to perpetuate racism and create further barriers for marginalised populations to receive safe and just mental health care.

To address this issue, mental health services must:

Address White Supremacy

Firstly, we must collectively understand that racism is not solely a problem for people of colour. Racism affects all bodies and cannot be undone if we do not address how racism and white supremacy manifest in all people, including white people. For white people racism gives power while for people of colour racism takes away power. These power structures dehuminise all of us. If we do not analyse nor challenge the manifestation of white supremacy in the mental health industry, the status quo of power will remain, and the price we pay for that is peoples mental health who cannot access adequate care. Mental health professionals also need to incorporate an intersectional perspective that recognise power imbalances in therapeutic relationships, particularly from a white supremacy and privileged point of view.

Focus on Racial Equity

Secondly, racial equity must become a common agenda in Sweden’s healthcare system. Equality in opportunity and access to mental health care can still continue to perpetuate racism. Focusing on an equity perspective can help us rupture discriminatory policies and racist barriers to shape a more just mental healthcare system. This can involve recognising the impact of systemic oppression on mental health, promoting anti-oppressive practices, advocating for policy changes that address racial inequalities as well as providing low-cost or free mental health services to reduce the barriers to access.

Analyse Power and Systemic Racism

Thirdly, we must collectively acknowledge and analyse systemic racism and the institutional power that perpetuates in psychotherapy, health care, and its delivery forms to make it anti-racist. It is easy to think that racism is something individuals only are responsible for. However, if we learn from history, we understand that racism is a systemic issue that perpetuates at all levels of society. It resides in the institutions, systems, and policies we all operate from as healthcare practitioners. By unpacking systems of power we can recognise how systems of racism create the internal realities of mental illness and suffering people experience. Anti-racist practice must therefore become a standard practice for all healthcare practitioners to prevent further harm.

Engage in Ongoing Education and Self-reflection

Lastly, engaging in ongoing education and internal work around racism is crucial and the first step to becoming an anti-racist practitioner. Take time to engage with anti-racist literacy and ongoing self-reflection around issues of power, privilege, and oppression. Remember that you both can be oppressed and the oppressor. Dichotomous thinking (i.e. “Black and White Thinking") is a self-defence trying to stop you from doing the internal work. To be able to undo rasism we must get uncomfortable, especially if you come to learn the power and privilege racism gives you.

Racism is embodied in all of us and was created to seperate us. A shared understanding of racism can therefore bring us together in to undo it, together.

Would you like to learn more?

Laskar Consulting offers workshops on anti-racist practice to help you analyze systemic racism, recognize how racism manifests in you and across society, and understand how collective healing and liberation drive social change.

The following terms are critical in understanding and addressing racism. They were well integrated and explained in PISAB’s Undoing Racism Workshop which I highly recommend to anyone seeking further knowledge on how to dismantle racism. 

• White supremacy

• Systemic racism

• Internalized racial oppression

• Internalized racial superiority

• Internalized racial inferiority

The following books can provide additional resources to broaden your anti-racist literacy. The first book is interactive and suitable for children too (Swedish version).

• T. Jewell. (2021). Anti-rasistisk handbook: 20 steg att bli medveten, förstå sig själv och skapa förändring (Swedish version published by Stiftelsen Friends). 

• R. Menakem. (2021). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialised Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.