Men from South Asian and black communities seek out mental health support 13 years after their white counterparts The two charities will focus on tackling mental health, but the positive effects of this work could translate to other areas, such as homelessness LONDON: Two British charities have teamed up to combat the crisis of mental health among Britain’s minority communities, with a particular focus on struggling young men. Young British South Asian and black men are more likely to struggle with mental health issues including anxiety and depression — but significantly less likely to come forward to seek out help than other demographics. But two British charities have now teamed up to counter this crisis, which they said began long before the pandemic — but Covid-19 served to exacerbate and bring to the fore the importance of mental health care among these men. Manchester-based charity Human Appeal works across Africa, the Middle East and in the UK to provide life saving humanitarian assistance to those in need, and it has collaborated with local Bradford charity Breaking The Silence to deliver desperately needed culturally sensitive mental health care to Britain’s many South Asian men — a significant proportion of whom are Muslim. Breaking The Silence was founded in 2012 by psychotherapist Imran Manzoor, in response to a clear rise in mental health disclosures from South Asian boys and young men. His organization now supports over 600 men and boys from across the UK, offering one-to-one counselling and group therapy programmes. Manzoor said: “Men from ethnic minority communities come to the attention of professional mental health services on average 13 years later, and in a more severely ill state than their white counterparts. “Whilst the masculine maxim of ‘strength in silence’ plays an important role in their reluctance to get help, it is also the cultural-specific beliefs about the causes of mental health that impacts how they experience these issues and their disposition to disclose. They fear being ridiculed. Our service makes clear that we are aware of and understand these beliefs, and that we can help despite them.” Fahad Khan, a manager at Human Appeal, told Arab News that this is a mission his organization were only too happy to support. “We were blown away by Imran and the work he was doing,” Khan said. “As a charity we want to be involved in causes that are providing much-needed support to the community and what Breaking the Silence is doing is right at the fore of that.” Human Appeal, Khan explained, will fund Manzoor’s work for the next year, and the knock-on effects of the collaboration could do far more than tackle mental health problems alone. Mental health and homelessness, he said, often go hand-in-hand and so by tackling declining mental health among minority communities, their work could also help those living rough on the streets to get back on their feet and access the help they need. And some of these people, particularly from minority backgrounds, need mental health care tailored to their own ethnic or spiritual backgrounds — and this is what makes Breaking The Silence such an important charity for the UK’s millions of Muslims. Khan said: “What Imran Manzoor is doing at Breaking The Silence is providing support to people who may not be able to access other mental health services, because they"re culturally sensitive, or they don"t have the capacity to support people who have cultural or religious sensitivities.