UK Study Finds Ethnic Minorities More Likely to Face Psychiatric Detention

A new study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology finds that ethnic minorities are more likely to be involuntarily hospitalized for mental health issues compared to White service users.

This UK-based study, led by Rooble Ali of King’s College London, additionally finds that women, those with migrant status, and those between the ages of 18-24 and 50-64 are more likely to face psychiatric detention.

There were also links between age, area-level deprivation, homelessness, and migration status to involuntary hospitalization of ethnic minorities, but these links disappeared when adjusting for other variables.

These findings raise serious concerns about racism, institutional bias, and the misuse of psychiatric authority.

“The study found evidence that compared to White British people there was a higher likelihood of involuntary hospitalisation in most minoritised ethnicities … On analysis of interaction in the unadjusted models, there were interactions between ethnicity and age, deprivation, homelessness, and migrant status in relation to involuntary hospitalisation, but these differences were no longer significant in the fully adjusted models,” the authors write.

The findings reveal that decisions to detain individuals against their will are not purely clinical but are shaped by patterns of social hierarchy, racialized assumptions, and institutional practices. By documenting how ethnicity, migration status, and age intersect with coercive psychiatric interventions, the research calls attention to the unequal distribution of surveillance, control, and care. It challenges us to reconsider who gets labeled as needing protection or containment, and how power operates through mental health systems under the guise of medical neutrality.