ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors consider some of the contemporary debates and theoretical positions around culture and diversity. They focus on the approved social worker's role in exemplifying good practice under the Mental Health Act 1983. There are, increasingly, welcome developments in the field of practice-related theory aimed at understanding and improving social work in the area of culturally-sensitive mental health. However concerns continue about the over-representation of black people within the compulsory mental health system, especially in relation to criminalisation and racial stereotyping. On psychiatric examination, Jimmy was ascribed a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. He was confined to a psychiatric hospital under section 37/41 of the Mental Health Act 1983. His criminal actions evoked the intervention of the judicial process in the form of rigid and strict controls as applied by the Mental Health Act.
