The annual Mental Health Act Statistics for 2024–25, published on Thursday, show detention rates for the Black or Black British group stood at 262.4 per 100,000 population, compared with 65.8 per 100,000 among the White group.
Rebecca Gray, director of mental health at the NHS Confederation, said the findings were a cause for “significant concern” across services.
“This new data shows that there continues to be worrying disparities in detention rates based on ethnicity which is causing significant concerns to those providing mental health services,” she said. “Implementation of the patient and carer race equality framework (PCREF) and widespread adoption of advance choice documents are examples of steps that should contribute to improvement over time.”
Gray also warned that deprivation plays a major role in driving detentions and length of stays in hospital wards. “Living in areas with the most deprivation can lead to increased social stressors for people with ongoing or emerging serious mental illnesses such as poverty and a lack of secure housing or employment,” she said. “These can drive detention levels and also impact how long people stay in inpatient wards.”
She added that while there will always be a need for inpatient wards to treat people when they are acutely unwell, reforms to the Mental Health Act and investment in community services would be crucial to tackling inequalities.
“The revised Mental Health Act will reduce the number of and length of detentions when fully implemented,” she said. “Increasing NHS and voluntary, community and social enterprise crisis services in the community designed with communities most impacted by severe mental illness will be an essential part of the evolution of mental health services.”
