Just as worrying as the findings of the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey are the methodological shortcomings of the survey itself, writes Sam Rodger, assistant director of policy and strategy at the RHO.
Experimental statistics, published earlier this week by the ONS, suggest that prior to the Covid-19 pandemic ethnic minority people had lower mortality rates and longer life expectancies than White people. Although received with some surprise, these findings were not unexpected. They reflect earlier analysis of mortality rates during the Covid-19 pandemic, which showed the now well-known higher rates of Covid-19 related mortality for ethnic minority people, but lower overall mortality rates.
My interest in equality first started in the 1980s. It was a wish of my parents for me to receive a ‘good education’. I was one of only four Black pupils in middle and high school, one that had changed from a boys’ grammar to a comprehensive. I could clearly see staff and teachers struggling with the new intake of Black faces that looked very different from other children; it was around then that I started, indirectly, forming questions about equality whilst facing the stark realisation about what difference meant.
For most of us, agency is something that, until recently, was easy to take for granted. In normal life, we make hundreds of choices every day and feel, for the most part, that decisions regarding our life and our health are ours to make. In other words, we feel free.
