Racism and Mental Health

• Anxious, fearful and unsafe. You may worry about how people are going to perceive and treat you. You might feel visibly different and vulnerable when you are around lots of people of a different race. You may spend time thinking about how you’ll protect yourself before entering certain places.
• Angry or frustrated. Particularly if you’re being treated unfairly and if you feel powerless to control it.
• Stressed. All kinds of racism can contribute to stress. This might include events such as sudden, unexpected abuse from another person. But it can also be a more long-term impact of dealing with regular microaggressions. Or from the ongoing effects of systemic racism on your life.
• Unusual and strange. Especially if people highlight, mock or criticise things that are ‘different’ about you. This process of making you feel as if you don’t fit in with what society considers normal is sometimes called ‘othering’.
• Confused or unsure about whether you’ve experienced racism. This is especially true if others ignore or deny your experiences. It can make you question your reality. This is sometimes referred to as racial gaslighting.
• Forced to suppress how you feel. You may find that you can’t show or even fully demonstrate your natural responses to things. To avoid more abuse, and to keep yourself safe, you may feel like you must not react to racism. This can leave you feeling numb or it may mean that the experience stays with you for a long time.
• Overwhelmed or worn down. You may encounter racism on a regular basis. This can have a cumulative effect on your mental health. You may feel surrounded by racism.

Your experiences of racism are personal to you. And they intersect with many other factors. Asking for help can be an important step towards improving your mental health.

Getting information and advice

You have the right to be and feel safe in your community. You also have the right to carry out your usual, daily activities. Nobody is allowed to treat you badly because of who you are or who they think you are. If you are intimidated, threatened or attacked because of your race, ethnicity or religion, you should contact the police on 101 (for non-emergencies) or 999 (for emergencies).

Inspire’s Advocacy for All service is available to everyone in Northern Ireland aged 18 and over. Phonelines and webchat are open from 10:00am to 4:00pm, Monday to Friday. To get in touch with Advocacy for All:

Other useful information

The Police Service of Northern Ireland has set out advice relating to hate crimes, and how to report them, over on its website. Click here for more information.

If you have been a victim of a hate crime, you can contact the Hate Crime Advocacy Service, which will be able to support you. You can email hate.crime@hcasni.org.uk or visit the website.

You may be exhausted by everything that is happening right now. It is important, therefore, to protect your mental health if you are feeling consumed by bad news. We have lots here to help you do that.

Mind has very detailed resources around mental health and racism. These include a series of definitions of relevant terms.

Jigsaw, a charity for children and young people, has put together a useful self-help toolkit, designed for those aged 12 to 25 deal with effects of racism. This is available here.

Centre for Mental Health has some interesting articles about race and mental health which you can read here.