Satbinder Kaul Bhogal - The Importance of Exploring Intersectionality in Addressing Harm in Services #BIGSPD23

The Mental Elf

Before her keynote talk at the 2023 BIGSPD conference in Glasgow, Dr Satbinder Kaul Bhogal, talks about the importance of exploring intersectionality in addressing harm in services.

Dr Satbinder Kaur Bhogal, Clinical Psychologist. Dr Kaur Bhogal has worked for over 20 years within the field of Mental Health in various organisations. She has led services to support children and adults experiencing complex emotional, social, and interpersonal difficulties, often referred to as ‘Personality Disorder.’ Satbinder has a keen interest in Attachment Trauma across the lifespan and provides therapy to support individuals to develop a better understanding of their needs and difficulties. Her areas of interest and expertise are with working with those who have who experienced trauma (including racial trauma) in their lives.

From a Punjabi Sikh background and being a Clinical Psychologist led Satbinder to develop an interest in working with minoritised and marginalised communities. This then led her complete her Doctoral research looking into the experiences of Black and South Asian users and their experiences of diagnosis and access to care in Mental Health Services. Working in inner city Birmingham which is full of cultural and racial diversity, Satbinder has a passion for ensuring equity in care for those that are marginalised, which includes access to care, issues around diagnosis, racism, intersectionality and health inequalities.

My experiences of working in services for those with a diagnosis of 'personality disorder' in Birmingham have led me to explore why we have over (e.g. white women) and under (e.g. Black women) represented groups in services. While we understand access to services being difficult, the issues on the diagnosis of 'personality disorder' and how the diagnosis in itself is rooted in biases, I will look to examine why holding a intersectional lens in our work, is so important in mental health services. Needed so that we can start to address the above issues, but also to ensure equity of care in access, support and treatment for those from marginalised groups.

Little attention is paid to intersectionality, that if left unexplored in-service use can lead to systemic harm, abuse and neglect in services. This is important because we know the diagnosis does harm and can further compound difficulties in those from marginalised groups. The term “intersectionality” was first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Intersectionality encompasses the idea that we have more than one identity with a combination of various identity markers such as race, gender, religion, sexuality, etc. These identity markers intersect with one another and shape our experience. This relates to mental health because our mental health does not exist separately from identity markers. Our mental health can be impacted by race, gender, sexuality, age, religion, and much more. There may also be unique life stressors that accompany these identity markers. For these reasons understanding people, being more than just a diagnosis is central to our work in providing compassionate care, as it affects recovery. However, it is important to understand that our individual identities are not the issue, the problem lies within our systems that can harm, abuse and neglect our users and at times lead to death.

I hope to raise awareness into why we need to talk about Intersectionality more in services and I will be drawing on my own intersectional lens and my experiences of leading services with diverse staff groups, whilst also bringing in the experiences of marginalised voices where systemic harm, abuse and neglect has been evident, further compounding the experiences for those that we care for. Please note that only themes will be shared and no identifiable material from any one individual will be shared.

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