I entirely agree with Professor Farooq that transcultural psychiatry has often ignored the very real, immediate and pressing clinical issues that are relevant to the mental health needs of ethnic minorities, while pursuing ideologically driven and empirically unverifiable agendas. Blaming psychiatry for ethnic differences in mental healthcare has simply shifted focus away from the social adversities that underlie such differences. Selten & Cantor-Graae ^{Reference Selten and Cantor-Graae1} have recently pointed out that such a shift of focus is convenient for politicians, since it makes it both safe (and cheap) to ignore the ‘epidemic of psychosis’ among ethnic minorities. In the UK, there appears to be a genuine desire within the Department of Health to address ethnic minority issues in mental health. This is in sharp contrast to much of continental Europe, where the issue barely registers, even in countries with large minority populations.

Language barriers and the role of interpreters in mental health are excellent examples of areas of practical and clinical significance which have received little research attention. Understanding and being understood must be the prerequisites of any therapeutic interaction, and yet so little research has been conducted on interpretation in mental healthcare. Interpretation is not simply translation; it is the process to ensure that the full linguistic and cultural meaning of what is said is truly conveyed. Scientific literature in the field is, however, restricted to descriptive reports about difficulties that occur in clinical encounters when interpreters are used, rather than on what influences the process and outcome of interpretation. ^{Reference Tribe and Lane2} For transcultural psychiatry to make a real difference to the health outcomes of ethnic minorities, it is research and evidence in this and similar areas that will yield benefits to our minority groups, rather than psychiatry-bashing.