Investigating "trauma presentation" in Croydon Integrated Psychological Therapy Service

Black and minority ethnic service users in Croydon are less likely to access psychological therapy than white service users, and this project will find out why. The Croydon Integrated Psychological Therapy Service treats people with common mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. But the service does not know whether its patient population reflects the ethnic diversity of the local community. If certain groups are underrepresented, the service may be failing to meet their needs—or may be inadvertently creating barriers to access. This project will analyse anonymised patient data to map exactly who is using the service, broken down by ethnicity, and compare that against local demographic data. If the research reveals gaps in access, the service can then adapt how it advertises its therapies, where it holds appointments, or how it trains its staff to work across cultural differences. The immediate impact is local: better, fairer mental health care for Croydon’s diverse population. But the method—linking routine service data to population data—could be adopted by other NHS psychological therapy services across the country, helping to reduce ethnic inequalities in mental healthcare at scale.