The relationships between black communities and the mental health (MH) services are fraught. Paradoxically, black communities receive the MH services they don't want, but not the ones they do or might want. Black people mistrust and often fear services, and staff are often wary of the black community, fearing criticism, and not knowing how to respond, are fearful of black people, in particular, young black men. The situation is fueled by prejudice, misunderstanding, misconceptions and sometimes racism. The present paper describes the findings of a study to explore the issues in greater depth. The study was premised on a belief that there are 'circles of fear' which lead to poorer treatment of black communities. A purposive sampling approach was used to seek out groups and individuals in whom the 'circles of fear' were likely to be evident. The findings suggest that there are fears which impact negatively on the interaction between black communities and MH services. Two major themes emerged in this study, i.e. the sources of fear and the consequences of fear. Sources of fear included perceptions of MH services, attitudes to mental illness and diagnosis, and experiences of hospital care. The impact of fear included limited trust, limited engagement and delayed help-seeking behaviour. The study concludes that these fears mar the interactions between these communities and MH services, affect help-seeking behaviour adversely, and lead to restrictive and punitive interventions. Progress will only be made in breaking the 'circles of fear' if there is a systematic change in the experience of black services users at each point in the care pathway.

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This paper explores the implementation of generic adult protection policies in mental health services, both in terms of conceptual issues about the nature and thresholds of abuse which are identified and/or tolerated within different settings, and in relation to existing structures for working on risk assessment, such as the Care Programme Approach and Supervised Discharge. The paper asks if resistance from mental health workers to new adult protection procedures reflects a reality that they have 'been doing it already' or whether there is a deeper resistance to acknowledgement of abuse issues in the lives of service users, and to the burden which such knowledge places on workers who are already stretched to the limit.

Anti-racist and black perspectives signalled a signi® cant shift in the discourse on oppression in social work practice and education. However, the contributions of such perspectives have not been recognised and documented fully. This paper presents a review of the contributions of anti-racist and black perspectives to anti-discriminatory practice. It also offers a critique of the limitations of anti-racist ideas and suggests that the way forward is not to reinforce a`¯ight' from anti-racism, but to build on the gains of anti-racist ideas and struggles in social work practice towards developing a more integrated understanding of oppression. This paper is written from the perspective of a black man from African background.

The mental health field is viewed by some as reluctant to tackle the problem of abuse.