Talking about mental health and seeking professional help within the South Asian community can be incredibly difficult, especially for men. From stigma within the community, family pressure, and structural racism and inequality within healthcare settings, taking that first step to getting help can be daunting.
Witnessing a gap in services offered to men from ethnic minorities in Bradford, and being reached out to personally from people who connected to him on a cultural level, this counsellor set about starting a project that offers support to those in the community who need it most.
Imran Manzoor, 47 from Bradford, created Breaking the Silence UK in 2012 in response to the lack of mental health care for South Asian men in the area. It was set up in the Meridian Centre, a community centre in Manningham that has been around since 1984, that was originally created for women and girls only.
With the promise of not detracting services from women and girls, the Meridian Centre helped Mr Manzoor form Breaking the Silence. Funding for the project comes from Children in Need, the Tudor Trust, Global Fund for Children, and most recently from the Manchester-based humanitarian charity called Human Appeal.
In 2012, Mr Manzoor was heavily involved with men who were victims of childhood sexual abuse. He said: “Back then I was dealing with men who were abused as children, a lot of it being sexual abuse. I believe these men were doubly victimised, as these men often ended back in Bangladesh or Pakistan for speaking out.
“The South Asian community is a community that doesn’t talk about sex, it is taboo. You can watch violence on the TV, but not sex. Therefore talking about relationships is in extreme secrecy.
“This means that you can’t speak out about the abuse that happened because it is not something that is allowed. Mainstream services didn’t care about the victims either, they weren’t the right ethnicity and so the men were rejected there too.
“I created this project so that men from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds can access the evidence-based support that they need. The project has been adapted and changed over time but there has been an increase in people accessing the service.”
The project has gone from helping a handful of people to between 90 and 100 people a year, with more than 2,500 calls coming in 2020, with the exponential increase due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
There is no typical user of the service, with the oldest gentleman being 72 years of age, and the youngest just 9. The project helps in numerous ways, including providing confidential support for anxiety, depression, intimacy, issues, stress, self-esteem, loneliness, and more.
Mr Manzoor said: “There is no one single profile that comes to us at Breaking the Silence. We have family men, refugees, very wealthy men with high profile jobs, and men on the margins of society. We are a secular organisation which means we accept anyone regardless of age or religion.”
The main reason calls increased during the pandemic was due to the number of people who couldn’t put food on the table for their families because of reduced income and lost jobs, and the feelings of guilt and shame that came with it. Mr Manzoor mentioned that: “There have been high levels of critical illness and bereavement within the South Asian community, up to three times higher than the general population. The reasons aren’t just biological.
“A lot of South Asian people in Bradford live in multi-generational households and they also hold a lot of public-facing roles such as bus drivers and customer service which means they have had to go out to work every day during the pandemic, and risk bringing the virus home with them.
“There is also high levels of technology poverty within the community in Bradford. With school being moved online for a lot of the kids in the area, they haven’t been able to fully participate with work because they don’t have access to laptops or computers, or the internet.”
Parents in the community were also left stranded, with a lack of accessible information from central or local government. Mr Manzoor said: “Parents would ring up and ask ‘What is going on? My kids can’t go into school and I have to go to work’ because they can’t afford a loss of income or risk losing their jobs, which meant that a lot of older siblings were tasked with looking after the younger kids.”
One of the big issues that Mr Manzoor and the team at Breaking the Silence deal with is the intersection of race and masculinity. In Britain, men are socialised to be “tough and strong” and while hyper-masculinity is a problem across the board for men in this country, being denied this identity because of racism has an equally damaging effect.
Mr Manzoor said: “‘Why do men not get help?’ because men are supposed to be tough and strong. This is a misassumption. Men are not held to be equal. Peeling away the layers like an onion show that a lot of minority ethnic men are left with a parody of masculinity because they have been denied true masculinity by wider society because of racism.
“Black, Asian, and minority ethnic men are not made to feel human. Some of the African men that I work with have told me about their experiences in some healthcare settings and it is absolutely appealing.
“I don’t condone dangerous driving, of course, but one man said to me that when they set their foot on the accelerator, it is the only time they feel powerful. We need to look at the root causes of things like dangerous driving and put things in place to stop the after-effects.”
For men to not have this parody of masculinity, Mr Manzoor says there needs to be a big change. “Stop and searches” by the police need to cease, there needs to be new and improved legislation, and there needs to be meaningful education that addresses the consequences of only looking at history from one perspective.
The police and police community support officers (PCSOs) can stop anybody and question them at any time and search you depending on the situation. These “stop and searches” disproportionately affect black, Asian and ethnic minority people.
Research published by the Government shows that for all Asian people the “stop and search” rate is 15 per 1,000 but this number increases when broken down by ethnicity. For Bangladeshi people, it is 29 per 1,000, for Pakistanis, it is 16 per 1,000 and 5 per 1,000 for Indian people. This is compared to 6 per 1,000 for white people and 54 per 1,000 for Black people.
Men from ethnic minorities experience mental health issues at a higher rate than the wider population, but access help later than on than other demographics. One reason for this is institutional racism, but for South Asian men, it is also culturally-specific beliefs, namely spiritualists that stop them from accessing professional help by qualified counsellors and psychotherapists.
Spiritualists aren’t found through mosques, as Imams are vehemently against this, says Mr Manzoor, but usually through word of mouth or in the backstreets of the community. Mr Manzoor said: The realm of spiritualists and spiritualism is attractive to people because they think that they can pay these people to take their pain and suffering away. Obviously, it just isn’t true.
“Instead they need a scientific, evidence-based approach for support. Mosques are opposed to these charlatans who sell their services to vulnerable people, it is completely exploitative and these people need to be protected.
“There is legislation against things such as forced marriages and there needs to be legislation for fraudulent spiritualists. There needs to be consequences.
“Breaking the Silence is a professional service, members of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP). Our practise adhere to and is informed by the ethical framework of the BACP.”
Breaking the Silence is open to anyone who is of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic heritage. The service is there to help anyone with a mental health issue, to give them justice and reclaim their history. For more information or how to access the services, visit here.
