Shock as Government Report Claims Schizophrenia is ‘Epidemic’ Amongst Africans in Britain
The liberal academic community is in shock this week after a Government Department of Health report claimed that schizophrenia runs at “epidemic” proportions amongst Africans living in Britain.
The Department of Health’s (DH) New Horizons in Mental Health strategy document says that Africans are nine times more likely to suffer from schizophrenia than whites.
This is, say the authors, “nothing short of an epidemic.” According to reports, the data emerged from a large study carried out by psychiatrists and epidemiologists at the social psychiatry unit of the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley hospital in south London.
Called “Aesop” (Aetiology and Ethnicity in Schizophrenia and other Psychoses), the study involved 500 patients with mental health problems from various ethnic groups, comparing them with a control group of 350 healthy subjects.
According to the British Journal of Psychiatry, schizophrenia is a “psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction.”
The symptoms also appear to manifest themselves at a relatively young age.
The DH researchers claimed that the root causes of the massive schizophrenia levels amongst Africans lay in a range of social factors that lead to “severe social isolation.”
These factors, the report said, include “people living alone, unemployment, and the vexed issue of separation from parents due to family breakdowns in the African Caribbean community amounting to a kind of ‘sensory deprivation’.”
“When you get figures like this . . . you can only call it an epidemic,” Julian Leff, emeritus professor at the Institute of Psychiatry was quoted as saying.
According to Louis Appleby, the Government’s chief advisor on mental health, the study is important as “Whereas our previous policy was mainly about reforming community care, this is more about how we can address some of the causes of mental illness, particularly in relation to ethnic minorities.”
* In the same week that the report was produced, a report jointly released by the prisons inspectorate and the Youth Justice Board entitled The Children and Young People in Custody 2008–2009 Survey found that young black men are “over represented” in youth prisons in Britain.
According to the report, 36 percent of 15- to 18-year old men held in youth custody in England and Wales are from black or other ethnic minority groups. The number is steadily growing, the report said.
The report also revealed that ethnic minority inmates were more likely to have been physically restrained inside the detention centres due to violent behaviour.
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