Solving the treatment compliance problem is one of the most important steps when conducting rural community mental health services in China. The results of this study showed that psychoeducational family intervention could improve the level of relatives’ recognition of mental illness, which was consistent with the results of some previous studies (Leff et al. 1990; Barrowclough et al. 1999). In addition, the results showed that family in- tervention could enhance treatment compliance, which was consistent with the results of our pilot study (Xiang et al. 1994; Ran and Xiang 1995). The favourable compli- ance might be related to higher improvement rates of psychopathologic symptoms (Klingberg et al. 1999). The reason for the increase in compliance may be: [1] the change in relatives’ beliefs about illness and their atti- tudes towards the patient; [2] the out-reaching method of going to the patients’ homes as the psychotic pa- tients in the Chinese rural community reside dispersedly and have different individual problems, they need more specifically tailored intervention methods conducted in their homes; and [3] the simple and effective drug treatment (long-term depot).