Across the UK, Canada, and Jamaica, Amanda Parris investigates how systemic racism has shaped the mental health outcomes of Black men and how communities are working to heal those wounds.

In South London, she begins her journey in a barbershop, where Black men gather to discuss their experiences navigating a system that too often misdiagnoses or detains them. In the UK, Black people are more than three times as likely to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act and disproportionately diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The episode traces the historical roots of this crisis, from slavery-era pseudoscience to the pathologizing of civil rights activism, revealing how psychiatry has often been used as a tool of control. In response, community advocates are developing new forms of care grounded in trust, representation, and lived experience.

In Canada, Amanda witnesses collective healing in action as Black men gather at workshops in prisons and retreat spaces to explore wellness through reflection, sound, and conversation. In Jamaica, she learns how practitioners are reclaiming psychiatry through post-colonial and culturally grounded approaches, though access and stigma remain enduring challenges.

Through these interconnected stories, the episode explores how Black men are reclaiming agency over their mental health. It asks what care can look like when systems harm, and how healing can be reimagined through culture, history, and community.

Part of For the Culture, Series 2.