How one woman set up mental health helpline for whole of SA

Many notable NGOs in SA today operate almost like secretarial services for the government, doing work that should be the preserve of the department they support. 

Nowhere is this dynamic more entrenched than in the sphere of mental health services. On the national health department’s website, for example, the listed helpline for mental health services belongs to a nonprofit, the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag).

Sadag is something of an enigma among homegrown NGOs — and not simply because it’s outlived almost all of its peers ( the group turned 30 in April). NGOs typically depend on funding for their survival, and the extent to which they’re able to raise funds usually depends on the sort of stories they tell in the public sphere. Sadag, however, doesn’t talk about itself in public.

How, then, has Sadag survived?

To find out, I contacted the organisation’s founder, Zane Wilson, who has been living abroad since 2023.

“It’s important to establish the context,” she says, in a raspy voice.

“Thirty years ago, people simply did not talk about ailments like depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. There were very few nonprofits working in mental health, and the few that did, dealt mostly with severe mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. 

“There was a directorate of mental health and substance abuse in the national health department, but its resources were likewise largely directed towards the management of severe conditions, and precious little attention was given to the more common mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. This is the context in which I found myself struggling with wave after wave of panic attacks.”

Wilson was born in Skegness, England, and her family owned a small hotel, which her mother ran, much aided by her daughter.

She became enthralled by a South African digs mate’s stories about her home country. The government was inviting immigration at the time, and paying for airfares, so Wilson booked a flight, and landed at Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts Airport ( OR Tambo International) just before her 21st birthday. She found a job in a Rosebank employment agency, and after just four months, she decided to go on her own, opening a shop in the old arcade on the corner of Commissioner and Market streets in downtown Johannesburg.

Wilson had built and sold several successful businesses by the time she experienced her first panic attack — an adverse reaction to medicine. After the first one there were more, increasing in frequency until she became, in her words, “totally debilitated”.

“Nobody I saw, whether GP or psychologist, could give me a clear diagnosis, and none of the blood tests or lumbar punctures that were performed on me shed any light. Nothing I was prescribed helped to change my reality, which was one in which I was not even able to shop for groceries without experiencing an attack...”

Today, panic disorder, with symptoms that include hot and cold flushes, shaking and sweaty palms, is widely recognised and highly treatable — many people who suffer from it recover fully if they receive the right combination of therapies. 

Wilson’s search for help took her to England and the US — but ultimately the relief she sought was right under her nose, in the form of Michael Berk, former psychiatrist with the Wits University school of medicine, and now teaching at Deakin University in Melbourne. He was quick to diagnose Wilson with panic disorder, and although the first type of medication he prescribed did not help, the second brought about a remarkable change. Wilson’s panic attacks completely ceased — and they have never returned. “Imagine my relief at discovering that this thing that had collapsed my life is in fact very treatable,” she says.

Berk spoke about the importance of peer support, particularly, and Wilson felt galvanised to take action, organising, with him, a meeting for sufferers of panic disorder at the Sandton Library in Johannesburg. She put out seats for 20, but nearly 100 people arrived, some having travelled from neighbouring provinces. 

Wilson continued to advertise in community newspapers, often listing her own number as contact, and soon the volume of people calling for advice was unmanageable, leading to the birth of the first Sadag call centre, domiciled in Wilson’s dining room and staffed by Wilson and friends. “One of the problems I identified early on was the lack of experience in mental health among doctors, and I wanted to be able to get 80–90 of them at a time on a group call to listen to experts sharing,” she says.

Wilson eventually found the software she was looking for in the US. “I went to this company and said: ‘If you let me bring your product into South Africa, I’ll get the pharmaceutical companies to pay for it, because it will enable them to interact with dozens of doctors and pharmacists at a time’. They came in with me 50%t,” says Wilson, who soon built a lucrative business around the teleconferencing product.

When she sold her share back to the parent company, it was with the proviso that Sadag will be allowed to continue to use the service for free.

There have been lean years too, though, of which Wilson says: “We would do whatever we needed to do to keep going. One year we sold these giant Christmas trees in Sandton for between R100 and R300. Other years, I’d sell lunches with personalities like Mark Shuttleworth and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I always kept ideas and some money in reserve and I still do, because if it happened once that we ran low, it will again.”

For her efforts in building Sadag, Wilson was presented with the Order of the Baobab in Bronze in 2012, by then president Jacob Zuma.

Today, Sadag – wich does not recieve a cent in government funding –operates over 30 helplines, and maintains more than 180 support groups, all supported by 300 plus counsellors. Their monthly phone bill alone is over R150 000.

Sadag’s training and culture emphasises to counsellors that they do not have to fix people’s problems.

To help them cope with the relentless exposure to sadness, trauma and crisis, Sadag’s counsellors are constantly debriefing — whether it’s the routine unpacking of calls with experienced supervisors or the ongoing interplay between colleagues in the office, sharing tips and advice.

Wilson, who turned 76 this year, remains very much at the helm of Sadag. “There’s so much to do, but nothing is more important than creating spaces in communities from which counsellors can work safely and effectively,” she says. ■ Bhekisisa centre for health journalism