ABSTRACT
The statutory sector mental health services seldom address the needs of Chinese people adequately (Li et al., 1999). Yet when the community attempts to provide them it is beset by many problems. One of the major challenges for both the statutory and voluntary sectors is the dispersed nature of Chinese people across the UK (Census, 2001c): there are over 88,000 in London (mainly in the boroughs of Barnet and Westminster). In the rest of England, over 33,000 live in the southeast (mainly around Oxford and Milton Keynes) and nearly 27,000 in the northwest (around the cities of Manchester and Liverpool). There are about 16,000 Chinese people in Scotland (mainly in Glasgow and Edinburgh), around 6,000 in Wales and just over 4,000 in Northern Ireland.
