Ethnicity and patient satisfaction

Patients from Black and ethnic minority groups are generally perceived to have a poor experience of mental health services but there is little hard data about this. A survey of about 27,000 users of community mental health services (of whom 10% were from ethnic minorities) has found that ethnicity had a smaller effect on patients' experience of mental-health services than other factors. Age, living alone, whether patients had been detained or not and whether they had been admitted as an inpatient were all stronger predictors of patients' experience than ethnicity. Relative to White people Black people did not report more negative experiences although Asian people were more likely to have had a negative experience of services.

Raleigh, Veena S. ... [et al] - Ethnic variations in the experiences of mental health service users in England British Journal of Psychiatry October 2007, 191, 304-312