In previous chapters we have seen how the exertion of political, economic and ‘medicalising’ power have impacted populations in Malawi and Sri Lanka, and that these impacts derive directly from colonialism and coloniality. By now turning to experiences of distress and its responses in the UK we are proposing a thread of continuity; that by reflecting inwards to the experiences of a colonial power, and applying the same concepts of colonialism and coloniality to the UK population, this chapter will provide not only further examples of the experience of medicalisation in relation to mental health that parallel those in the colonised world, but also an analysis of the mechanisms of colonialism and coloniality that is similarly based on notions of superiority and the exertion of power. But this time power is being exerted over its ‘own’ populations. Approaching the chapter in this way aligns with Césaire’s concept of the ‘boomerang effect’ where ideas and practices are tested in the colonies and then applied within the colonial power’s home country (Césaire, Discourse on colonialism, Monthly Review Press, 2000). Evidence from the UK’s ‘indigenous healing system’ of biomedicine and the contemporary austerity-based context of the UK’s health services will expose similarities with the colonial experience of imposed expert/elite knowledges and distraction from social ills. Examples of resistance and opposition to imposed knowledges, as well as those promulgating and ‘interpreting’ knowledges, will reflect parallels with experiences recorded in earlier chapters from Malawi and Sri Lanka. The impact of the current biomedical public hegemony on mental health and the UK’s mental health services will be compared to the 1966 Aberfan disaster in the UK which occurred at a particular fault-line between traditional community-based and biomedicalised responses to people’s distress.