I can vividly recall the setting. I sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair against the wall of a nondescript hospital meeting room. The light was blocked by a blind so we would be able to see the slightly out-of-focus slides projected to illustrate our weekly psychiatry lectures. That week’s topic was psychosis, and it was there I learned that any children that I, as a Black Caribbean migrant, might one day have would face an exceptionally high risk of developing schizophrenia.
Black Caribbean people born in the UK had a nine times higher risk than their white British counterparts of developing schizophrenia, I was told. The life expectancy for any person diagnosed with a psychotic illness was 15 years shorter than the UK average. I was shaken and outraged.
