In the midst of frenetic commercials selling soaps, jeans and politicians, the television screen is held in seeming freeze frame: a close-up of a telephone answering machine. An incoming call activates the tape recorder and we watch the wheels spin. But for the duration of this spot, no voice speaks. The phone is not hung up. The mysterious caller appears to be unable to say what he or she wanted to say. At the machine switches off, the titles appear:

‘Schizophrenia has many faces – speechlessness is just one.’ This statement is followed by a toll-free number, which the viewer can call for help or more information.

This television spot, winner of a bronze award in the Austrian Commercial Competition, was run on national television in September and October 2000. At the same time, posters in buses and transit stations presented other ‘faces of schizophrenia’.

Geography undoubtedly played a role in the Austrian Local Action Group's choice of television as a medium to communicate their message – as it did in the choice for Austria to be the first of the three pilot site countries to start the programme as a national effort. Austria is one-sixth the size of Spain. The province of Alberta where the Canadian programme began in Calgary is larger than Spain and Austria combined (661,848 km2). The greater metropolitan region of Madrid is home to a population that is now more than half the total population of Austria.