Over the last few years there has been a greater interest in psychiatric disability and the provision of specialist psychiatric disability programs. This was partly due to the recognition that clinical treatment services alone were not sufficient to ensure recovery and a return to independent living for people with psychiatric disorder. based care. Research by the Victorian Tranxultural Psychiatry Unit has shown that arrcss to community based clinical services is problematic for many ethnic communities. This article explores the area of psychiatric disability services. which constitute a small but increasingly important part of the service system, and reports on a study which examined the use of these services by people of nonEnglish speaking background (NESB), and the implications of the findings for service providers. The concept of disability The International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH) developed by the World Health Organisation [ 11 provides the basis for differentiating between symptoms of illness and ongoing disabilities. The