The Colour of Madness: Mental Health and Race in Technicolour Edited by Samara Linton and Rianna Walcott Pan Macmillan. 2022. £16.99 (hb). 336 pp. ISBN 9781529088496

Samara Linton and Rianna Walcott should be commended for sharing their personal experiences in this book and for gaining the trust of so many people who also share experiences. The word ‘colour’ in the title is used to represent different experiences, each colour speaking to a different experience. This, along with the chapter titles and the names of the authors, reminds us of the great cultural and ethnic diversity that we live in. The reader experiences the pain, hope, exasperation and suffering of the authors, as well as their love and the lack of it.

This is a journey through slavery, colonisation, racism, migration, discrimination, personal trauma and the impact of being a migrant or a refugee and of being transgender. The emphasis is on how these conditions affect people of colour. The book shares the stories of people who do not feel understood, whose culture is alien to many, who do not fit in and who are treated differently.

These stories show the extreme difficulties people have had to endure, including lack of empathy, misinterpretation of words and actions based on lack of cultural awareness, dealing with mental health problems and discrimination and the impact of both together.

These are powerful stories and I often had to take breaks while reading this book. I felt both physically and emotionally affected by the strength of emotion it conveyed. Many of the stories resonated with me as a person of colour and I am sure will resonate with anyone who has heard experiences of minority ethnic patients and staff of colour.

There are stories of schizophrenia, anxiety, obsessive–compulsive disorder, eating disorder, to name just a few. The reader cannot help being affected by the experiences of loneliness, social isolation and discrimination that are so vividly described, and by the positive experiences of being acknowledged, being cared for, of receiving therapy and the role of prayer. These are stories written by patients, staff, parents, children, researchers, many who have more than one of these identities. This adds so much to the richness of the book and the layers of experiences.

This is an important book for clinicians. It shows that people often hide their pain and suffering, and that routine clinical questioning do not necessarily help patients tell their stories and that there is need to provide multiple ways for people to be able to feel safe and express themselves. And even, importantly, to acknowledge one's own ignorance about the lives of one's patients. We need more books like this, and we need to use them for training clinicians and wider society so that, step by step, perhaps we can do better.