ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the level and type of coverage given to mental health issues concerning ethnic minorities in the literature within the legal field. A general survey of some key legal areas is made, including the fields of anti-discrimination law, immigration law, and the criminal law system. In the period after the Second World War, immigration from non-European territories and the development of a sizeable non-white ethnic minority population in Britain have called into question the legal framework of liberal quasi-secularism that reluctantly admits of plurality. The Index to Legal Periodicals and Books and the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals were examined on CD ROM. The main legislation empowering different agencies to exercise coercive powers against persons on the basis of a diagnosis of their mental condition is the Mental Health Act 1983. There are several detailed studies on the provisions of and the practical operation of the Mental Health Act.
