Anabelle Paulino and Maya Ogonah are postgraduate research students in the Department of Psychiatry. Last year they decided to set up a new seminar series focusing on issues relating to race in the field of psychiatry. Each month a relevant paper is presented – either by one of the authors or by a researcher not connected to the paper – followed by a discussion. It has been a big commitment for two busy research students working on their theses but has been a success with a regular and consistent attendance from staff and students in the department. It has been supported by the Department’s Race Equality Working Group.
Q. How did the Race in Psychiatry Journal Club come about?
Anabelle: Around a year ago, we went to a race and health seminar at Green Templeton and we had a conversation there about what our department was doing in terms of looking at race and psychiatry. We thought about it and got in touch with the Race and Equality Working Group here in Psychiatry.
Maya: The Working Group is not looking at things so much through an academic lens, so they were on board with the idea of us setting up a club to do so and helped us with the building blocks of how we can set this up in the department.
Anabelle: Pretty much everyone we talked to was very enthusiastic! I think we’re quite lucky that they’re quite flexible in the Psychiatry Department, in terms of us having this new idea and them giving us tools to try and be able to make it happen.
Maya: We didn’t realise how rare it was to have a group like this until people kept on mentioning it.
Q. WHY YOU THINK IT IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE A GROUP LIKE THIS?
Maya: Personal characteristics can really shape your experiences and your treatment in healthcare settings. Having a space where the implications of race and ethnicity on lived experiences and mental health outcomes can both inform future work, and inspire researchers from diverse backgrounds to get involved and engage members from their own community in research.
Anabelle: I think it’s really important from an educational and communicative standpoint. Not only is the topic of race and psychiatry important to discuss and learn about, but it’s also valuable to do so among a group of peers. Having this group has been a nice way for us to have these discussions in a more casual setting, so people may also feel more willing to raise questions. Even just the dialogues we’ve had have been quite educational, so I think a group like this is also important to that end.
Q. How do you find speakers and subject areas?
Maya: We’ve had one external speaker, but most have been internal. We’ll listen to a podcast and look at academic twitter and see who comes up. Since the journal club’s been going we’ve had a few people reach out to us saying they’d want to present their work. That was really nice because it felt like a benchmark.
Anabelle: There has been a mix of people presenting on their own work and on relevant work in the literature. I think it’s been much more of a collaborative process - planning went into it obviously, but it felt like more of a group plan. It also gives the speakers an opportunity to highlight their own work and think about how it fits in - it was cool to see just how many ways race and psychiatry could take form.
For me personally, I don’t have as much space to explore race and ethnicity in my research, just because it’s not available in the registered data that I work on. So I think it’s provided a great outlet to explore this intersection between race and psychiatry with an academic lens.
Q. Have you come out of that seminar series with any more thoughts on race and psychiatry in research?
Anabelle: It’s highlighted the need for a focus on race in psychiatric research, but I also think this club has really helped me learn the ways in which that could be possible, or the practicalities of doing that. Sometimes, it’s not that researchers don’t want to look at race and ethnicity, it’s just that maybe they don’t have the data to, or sometimes the specific research design doesn’t fit that way. For instance, we presented a paper a couple of months ago on latent class analysis. With the way that it worked it was almost like the data classified itself into these groups that weren’t necessarily diverse, and again it wasn’t even the result of researchers doing that, it was just the way that the data was structured. It’s kind of given me a new perspective on how to look at that.
Maya: Because we both use large data sets, whether it be population-scaled datasets or evidence synthesis, I’m restricted to how other people have classified data. For my study I've applied the census data but if I don’t get that I don’t even have any ethnicity data at all. It’s been interesting to hear about some more qualitative research, where you have more scope to design it yourself and what people have been finding out there and how that could be applicable to our type of research in the future. For me, it’s really emphasized the point of intersectionality. I think, a lot of the time, people are lumped together in BAME. Your different ethnicities mean you might have very different experiences, or if you’re a woman of colour versus not. All these different things play a really big role and it’s been nice to tease out and explore the impact that makes.
Q. What have been your particular highlights of the journal club?
Maya: To me they’ve felt like very conversational discussions. I wasn’t really sure what the format was going to be, but people seem very engaged and everybody’s chatting, which I think is one of the most important things to me - that we actually had people who are interested and turned up.
It shows that even as students we can be seen as researchers who are setting this up and trying to start these discussions and keep them going.
Anabelle: Just getting people to share their work has been really cool. To hear, for instance, the TRADE project that Dr Yasmin Ahmadzadeh at King’s College London had done, that was one of my favourite journal clubs.
Maya: Yasmin also asked us to talk to her anti-racism group at King’s. We met them virtually and discussed how we set up the journal club. I think that was actually a really big highlight: her asking us to talk about what we’d done because she liked it.
Anabelle: It was interesting because when she did reach out to us, she was saying ‘only if you guys have time’, and we said ‘no please, it would be great for us to share what we’re doing!’ It also shows that even as Masters and DPhil students we can be seen as researchers who are setting this up and trying to start these discussions and keep them going.
Q. What are the plans going forward?
Maya: We want to keep this journal club going, because we’ve had so much feedback from it. I think now it is about putting our efforts towards the beginning of next term. With Anabelle leaving next term (Anabelle is going on to do a DPhil at UCL), we also want to meet other people who may be want to take more of a lead and keep it going. I don’t think I would have set this up without Anabelle, I think it’s been really nice to do that with a fellow student and we sit next to each other so it was very easy!
Anabelle: It’s very much reciprocal – I don’t think I would have been able to do this myself at all and I have really appreciated getting to work together with Maya on this. We think it’s been a great addition to the department, and so many people have said that as well. We definitely want to thank everyone who’s been a part of this.
Q. What advice would you give to others who would like to set up a similar project?
Anabelle: I think establishing a core group of people that turn up, having consistency, versus having a lot of people coming for the first time and then not many after that. Also getting feedback from people who are turning up is very helpful. I think it’s also about being open to how it evolves. At the beginning, we weren’t sure if it was going to be more people presenting on the relevant work, or people presenting on their own work, who would be presenting on what, and it evolved to be a mix.
Maya: We were lucky that our department does have a Race Equality working group so we were able to come to them and they were able to give us a budget for discretionary spending. If you don’t have a Race Equality working group, if you have an equivalent you could go to, they’ll know more about the departmental structure and logistical information.
Being able to figure out the logistical structure is probably just as important, if not more important, than figuring out who you actually want to come speak.
Anabelle: Being able to figure out the logistical structure is probably just as important, if not more important, than figuring out who you actually want to come speak. Just thinking about how much administration goes into it, and how much planning in advance, is also important. Some of the Professional Services Staff, like our reception team, have been incredibly helpful with making this happen and trying to keep it running smoothly.
Maya: We’ve been lucky so far that everybody’s been happy to talk for free, but I think it’s nice having a budget, especially if you expect people to come and travel or they want to be paid for their time, I think it's very fair and it’s not offered enough in academia. Especially if you’re being inclusive of people that have childcare responsibilities, so having some system in place to fund that would be something to think about.
If you would be interested in finding out more about being involved in the Race and Psychiatry Journal Club contact Maya and Anabelle.