Schizophrenia--a national emergency: preliminary observations on SANELINE

In May 1992 the British mental health charity SANE inaugurated a telephone helpline for people suffering from or copying with severe mental illness. From its first days the line has been inundated by people needing information and help about their illness. The line is open from 1400 to midnight every day of the year, and is manned by almost 100 trained volunteers supervised by professional staff. In total more than 100,000 people have called the SANELINE number since it opened. For every call taken, a detailed log is written up immediately. The service is, of course, confidential. We recognized even before the line was opened that these logs would provide unique information on which a wide range of research could be based. One of the most frequent problems about which callers told us was dissatisfaction with the medication they were given. Many callers complained about the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. We have been working on a pilot study to determine the problems sufferers find with their medication, which may throw light on the concept of the neuroleptic-induced deficit syndrome.