Epistemic injustice describes a socio-philosophical phenomenon; one that typically affects the most marginalised groups of our society. The term “epistemic” relates to knowledge, and in philosophical literature, the broader study of epistemology; in the context of an injustice, it denotes harm inflicted on individuals in their capacity as knowers, reasoners, or questioners. Philosopher Miranda Fricker coined the term testimonial injustice, whereby an occurrence of injustice is caused by a person’s testimony or capacity to articulate their experience being undermined due to a pre-existing, prejudicial apathy against their social group. This phenomenon is pervasive in the world of psychiatry too, where individuals who suffer from mental health conditions often experience a credibility deficit; that is, a clinician or doctor deflating a patient’s level of credibility regarding their knowledge, and specifically a patient’s role as a giver of such. This makes mental illness patients vulnerable to a subliminal type of injustice that is institutionally sustained, and a severe issue within global psychiatry. To return to Fricker’s conception of epistemic injustice, part of the scope of this injustice pertains to testimony; here, the epistemic transgressor discounts the speaker’s testimony due to unconscious/conscious biases against their social identity. For example, a white police officer doubts a black man’s explanation that he owns the car he is driving, revealing how prejudices can distort credibility assessments. In psychiatry, similar biases undermine the testimony of patients with mental health conditions, amplifying their struggles. Moreover, a psychiatric patient who reports an unlikely truth, or one that appears as a mere slim probability in everyday settings, can be attributed to the fact that the speaker has a mental health condition. E.g., a young man at a psychiatric ward in Munich once met a patient who claimed to be a relative of Stalin. This claim was quickly deemed a delusion, but in fact, was later verified to be true. The dismissal of a patient’s epistemic awareness might not seem to have any significant subsequent effect on overall clinical treatment, however, this may in fact perpetuate a cycle of mistrust and continuous marginalisation. Epistemic injustices seem to coincide with false stereotypes about mental illnesses in psychiatric settings. So, what is psychiatry left with? Patients with mental disorders ad nauseam receive unhelpful marginalisation and categorical judgements such as that they are unreliable, irrational or even dangerous, simply due to society’s ill-assumed perceptions of mental health patients, which continuously hold patients responsible for their conditions, exacerbating stigmatisation. Along with the social and cognitive burdens mental health patients must face, terms like “mad” or “insane” isolate individual’s capacities as knowers, insofar as some clinicians unconsciously or consciously judge that since a patient suffers from a mental health issue, their cognitive faculty is in some way not at all available to make rational statements that relate to true knowledge. This stigmatisation is not merely social but systemic. Despite the mental health burden on the NHS taking up a large portion of health cases, the UK government’s budget only dedicates around 13% (2024) to account for this. Such disparities highlight how institutional biases mirror and reinforce societal attitudes, leaving psychiatric patients disadvantaged cognitively, socially, and economically. To overcome the effects of epistemic injustice, and ultimately, to redress these issues, we are required to intervene at multiple levels including social, clinical and political. Schwartz rounds offer a promising method within healthcare settings – these entail structured sessions that allow a reciprocal, conversational way of discussing the emotional and social dimensions of a patient’s life, fostering an institutional culture of empathy and care. To train clinicians in this way word ensure that patient’s epistemic significance is recognised and respected, thus giving patients a greater voice in their care. In social media, representations of mental health ought to shift in a way that is respectful; editors and creators of content bear a responsibility to recognise these conscious or unconscious biases. Reliance on such biases can be considered a moral and epistemic failure. It is no radical claim to regard media as a crucial role in giving patients recognition of their epistemic ability. The fight against epistemic injustice in psychiatry is inseparable from the broader struggle for equity in mental health care. Within psychiatric settings, clinicians are required to address credibility deficits at a first requirement; our foremost goal, however, is to ensure systemic changes are employed to allocate resources equitably for mental health patients. This includes physical resources and material goods, but also resources of a non-physical nature such as time, attention, and care. Recognizing individuals with mental health conditions as full epistemic agents—not merely subjects of care—requires society to question deeply ingrained, epistemic biases and move toward a more inclusive understanding of mental health that respects all as agents of knowledge.