The awareness programme focuses on sensitization towards psychiatric illness and the decrease of the duration of untreated illness, and this is particularly relevant for early recognition and intervention in prodromal stages. The establishment of local networks in two intervention areas allows for an early recognition inventory to be implemented in order to identify people at high risk of developing schizophrenia. With respect to the results of the awareness programme there are suggestions that the long duration of untreated illness seems typical of the German mental health system, although on the other hand the long duration could also be caused by the methods of measurement. The final pre–post evaluation will be carried out in 2004.