Monitoring the Mental Health Act: inequalities we can no longer ignore

The latest Monitoring the Mental Health Act findings once again highlight stark and persistent inequalities in how the Act is applied:

🔹 People living in the most deprived areas are 3.6 times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than those in the least deprived areas.

🔹 People of Black or Black British ethnicity are over 8 times more likely to be placed on a Community Treatment Order compared with White British people — a disparity that has widened, not reduced.

🔹 Awareness and implementation of the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF) remains worryingly low in many services, despite being mandatory.

🔹 There is continued inconsistency in care for LGBTQ+ people and for those with learning disabilities and autism — particularly where staff are temporary or agency-based.

These findings are not new — but they are becoming more entrenched. They speak to systemic issues around culture, confidence, legal literacy, and accountability, not simply policy gaps.

At Mental Capacity Building, we have developed unique, practice-grounded training and development programmes that directly address these challenges — supporting professionals to apply the Mental Health Act and Mental Capacity Act lawfully, ethically, and equitably, with a strong focus on:

• anti-discriminatory practice

• PCREF implementation

• culturally informed decision-making

• confidence in complex assessments and safeguards

We would welcome a conversation about how we could support your organisation in reducing such inequalities.