Kent Sikh health research

The aggregation of discrete ethnic communities into broad categories, subsequently considered as homogenous groups, has prevented the understanding of critical factors contributing to adverse mental health outcomes. This perpetuates the invisibility of large heterogenous ethnic subgroups in the United Kingdom, with serious consequences for developing mental health policy to adequately address these factors in specific ethnic communities.

We lack an in-depth understanding about the mental health of Sikhs in the UK, a group that is often buried in the collective terms “South Asian” or “Indian” in the UK. This is problematic as it does not consider the specific context (such as racism, sexism, religion, disadvantages) of important groups within the large communities brought together in these collective terms. Most Sikhs in the UK have their origins in the Punjab in Northwest India or in East Africa. The first group of Sikhs migrated to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. The 2021 UK census recorded 524,000 Sikhs, which is an increase of 24% since the 2011 census. The Sikhs now constitute about 1% of the UK population. County Kent, in southeastern England, is home to a large Sikh community of over 74,000 Sikhs.

A research team at the University of Kent, led by anthropologist Lisa Dikomitis and psychiatrist Sukhwinder Singh Shergill, established a Sikh mental health research program to assess factors influencing mental health in Sikhs. The Kent research team includes a group of Sikh community co-researchers and international PhD students and artists, including audio documentary maker Elena Dikomitis. The research program started in the spring of 2022 with an anthropological study in one large Kent Sikh community, examining health beliefs and experiences of migration and racism across different generations of Sikhs.