News

SANE goes on-line to help

SANELINE, a national phoneline for people affected by mental illness, was launched at the end of April.

Initially, the phoneline will be open on bank holidays and weekends only, but by the end of the year it will operate every evening.

It is run by SANE, the charity set up in 1986 to raise awareness about schizophrenia but which now covers all areas relating to mental illness. The service is funded by private donations, but SANE needs a further 1.2m to finance the three-year test period.

The charity says it is often at night or at weekends that people feel most isolated and desperate and when mental health problems become most acute. Before the launch of the phoneline, there was no specialised service available to families, friends and people with mental illness at these crucial times and the Samaritans and Childline report an increasing number of calls from people with mental illness and their relatives in recent months.

The phoneline will be operated by trained volunteers with access to a database enabling them to refer callers on to local support groups and services.

SANE has been instrumental in raising public awareness about mental illness, and has been outspoken on the issue of the closure of psychiatric wards and the government’s ‘care in the community’ policies. It says the situation constitutes a ‘national emergency because the severity of the problem has been underestimated, plans and funding for care in the community haphazard, and this has resulted in the intolerable neglect of thousands of sufferers and their families’.

According to SANE’s figures, 40 percent of homeless people in London have some form of severe mental illness.