In our community study of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among elderly South Asian immigrants from the Indian sub-continent (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) living in Bradford (UK), we found depression in 20%, dementia in 4% and anxiety neurosis in 4%. Subjects were interviewed at their place of residence by a consultant psychiatrist familiar with their culture and language. The Hindi translation of the community version of the Geriatric Mental State schedule (GMS-A) was also administered. Psychiatrist's ICD-9 diagnosis was compared with GMS-AGECAT computerized diagnosis. We found low-level agreement in dementia cases (kappa 0.33) whereas the agreement in subjects with depression was high (kappa 0.81). In many subjects GMS-A made a diagnosis of dementia not diagnosed as cases by the psychiatrist, who had the benefit of additional history information from carers in this population from a different culture and educational background. These findings are discussed along with suggestions and present limitations of GMS-A in the diagnosis of dementia in cross-cultural research. Larger studies are needed in this population (a) to find out prevalence rates in countries of origin and (b) to investigate the author's (KB) observation of low rates of Alzheimer's type dementia in this population, which may have aetiological significance.