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Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2006) 12: 141-151
© 2006 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Informing progress towards race equality in mental healthcare: is routine data collection adequate?

Peter J. Aspinall

Peter Aspinall is a senior research fellow at the University of Kent (Centre for Health Services Studies, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, George Allen Wing, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF, UK. E-mail: P.J.Aspinall{at}kent.ac.uk). He is also Honorary Special Advisor to the London Health Observatory and has recently undertaken commissioned research on ethnic disparities in health and healthcare for the Department of Health’s Equality and Human Rights Group and the Welsh Assembly Government. He was National Convenor for the Office for National Statistics 2001 Census Working Group on the Ethnic Group Question and has worked extensively with the London Health Observatory on ethnic health intelligence issues.

The quality, completeness and coverage of ethnicity data in mental health services has long been regarded as unsatisfactory. The Department of Health’s new 5-year action plan for delivering race equality in mental healthcare seeks to improve this key building block by setting out actions to improve both the quality of information and its analysis and dissemination. However, those that are tangible and specific are few: annual surveys of service users, national censuses of mental health in-patients and tables of National Confidential Inquiry suicide cases and in-patient deaths by ethnicity. The opportunity to seek improvements in the quality and coverage of key routine data-sets such as ethnic monitoring in primary care and the Hospital Episode Statistics database has not been seized. Moreover, the plan does not mention proposed changes in civil registration (births and deaths) and the coroner service and their potential benefit. The continuing gaps in the information base justify a stronger emphasis on the processes necessary to bring about change rather than on what ethnic monitoring should provide.




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