What is Rethink?

Vanessa Pinfold: Rethink is a membership charity and we are there to support everybody affected by severe mental illness.

Rethink was established over 30 years ago and it used to be called the National Schizophrenia Fellowship.

Just over 30 years ago, a carer, a family member supporting his son with schizophrenia, wrote a letter to The Times and talked about what it was like for him supporting his son with schizophrenia, and the difficulties the family were undergoing, the difficulties that his son was experiencing, and he was inundated with other letters from other family members who were experiencing similar difficulties. 

He realised that there was a need, there was a gap, that there wasn’t an organisation that was there to support families supporting those with schizophrenia, and therefore the National Schizophrenia Fellowship was born – really founded on that concept of fellowship, bringing people together for support. It had an embryonic growth and it’s grown and grown and grown, and we are now a much larger charity providing 360 services, 140 support groups. We have a big campaigning arm to the charity, do parliamentary work, policy work, research, provide information...and so it’s grown over time, but the seeds and the aims of the charity have remained the same, and we are here to support everybody affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life.

Why did Rethink change its name?

Rethink changed its name a few years ago because I think we felt that we needed to refresh the image of Rethink and really to address some of the key campaigning priorities of the charity around emphasising recovery and also our big challenge about addressing stigma and discrimination. We also have a lot of people who use the services who don’t have a diagnosis of schizophrenia, so when we were known as the National Schizophrenia Fellowship... how do we support people with severe mental illness right across the broad spectrum of mental illness when we were only called the National Schizophrenia Fellowship?