Chapters 2 and 3 highlight various factors, such as exposure to stressful life events, neighborhood cohesiveness and family social support, that impact quality of African American life. In Chapter 3, "Stress and Residential Well-Being", Gayle Phillips examines the role that stress and housing quality play in explaining neighborhood satisfaction among African Americans. Chapter 4 also focuses on quality of life and provides a transition from the positive side of African American mental health to the more negative -- how problem drinking exacerbates a host of physical and mental health problems. Chapters 5 and 6 describe some of the more problematic aspects of black life by detailing the impact that serious personal problems can have on mental health. In "The Association Between Anger-Hostility and Hypertension" (Chapter 7), Ernest Johnson and Lawrence Gant examine the relationship between hypertension and the expression of black anger toward those responsible for igniting those feelings. In Chapter 8, "Coping with Personal Problems," Clifford Broman argues that black coping capacity is the under-studied factor that ameliorates the impact of stress on African American mental health. Chapter 9 is entitled, "Kin and Non-Kin as Sources of Informal Assistance." Here, Taylor, Chatters and Burns expand upon their previous gerontological research on family support by focusing on the informal networks of younger and middle-age blacks as well. Chapter 10 also addresses help seeking behavior, but this investigation focuses exclusively on black women, exploring the combined use of informal and professional help. In Chapter 11, Mays, Caldwell and Jackson offer a unique and insightful clinical perspective on how and why black women use the mental health services for help with problems. The relationship between African Americans and law enforcement has been the center of much attention and debate. The message seems to be clear -- blacks and the police do not get along. Chapter 12, takes a refreshing look at this important topic. The last chapter takes a dynamic view of the changes in some key indicators of African American mental health over the volatile period of the 1980s. Analyses in this chapter are based upon the National Survey of Black Americans Panel Survey (Jackson, Brown, Williams, Torres, Sellers, & Brown, in press) which followed the original 1980 National Survey of Black Americans respondents and interviewed a substantial number of them on three additional occasions, 1987, 1988-89, and finally in 1992.