It was a Saturday afternoon, after another week of uncertainty. We had bickered for about two hours, not really knowing what to think. I picked up the receiver. It was, as I feared, a collect call from Karen, who had disappeared about three weeks earlier. She was in Sydney. She had no money — not even enough to make a local phone call. She sounded desperate.

"Where are you calling from?" I asked.

"A public telephone box."

"It probably has a number," I said. "See if you can find the number."

After about 15 seconds, she told me the number.

"Right," I said. "You can hang up now. But stay by the telephone. I will try to find help for you."

Who do you turn to in such an emergency — the police, the social/psychiatric services, the Salvation Army? Before Karen's disappearance, I had spent several weeks trying to persuade such agencies to take action, without success. I doubted their ability to act effectively or appropriately now.

There was also no point in my flying to Sydney. By the time I arrived, she would have disappeared again. Besides, I was an "evil" influence in her eyes — one of the sinister, shadowy figures who had somehow conspired to "ruin" her life.

A few weeks earlier, in Auckland, she had told me she would take money from me, but would on no condition see me.

I decided to call the only person I knew in Sydney and to place our predicament in his hands. But there was a hitch: I didn't know the man particularly well.

To complicate matters, he was an Arab. And that was not all. In appearance, he was the archetypal "Islamic terrorist". He had a long beard, and wore a turban and flowing robes. In fact, he was a veritable clone of Osama bin Laden.

Asking him for anything seemed like asking for an awful lot. But desperate times demand desperate measures. I called the number.

A woman answered. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to remember the correct Arabic greeting. Then I introduced myself. Had she heard about me from her husband, I asked hopefully.

No, she hadn't. Abdullah had recently returned from New Zealand. He was sleeping in the next room. She didn't want to wake him.

The response didn't sound promising, but I pressed on. Condensing events as much as possible, I poured out the story of Karen's slide into paranoia and of my failure to find help for her in New Zealand.

"And now she's standing by a telephone somewhere in Sydney, without anywhere to stay tonight," I explained.

To my relief, the voice at the other end sounded totally unperturbed by this extraordinary tole of woe from a stranger in another country. In fact, Mrs A, as I will call her, immediately took control of the situation.

As we had the number of the phone box, she said, clearly the first thing to do was to call it — and make sure Karen was still there. I hung up, and waited impatiently for about 10 minutes. Then I called again.

"Yes, she's still there, and I know where the place is. I can pick her up in my car."

I was elated. I hardly knew what to say.

"But I'm a fully veiled Muslim woman," Mrs A said suddenly, sounding anxious. "How will Karen react?"

I almost laughed. Under the circumstances, a rescuer in a coat of porcupine quills would, I felt sure, be welcomed with open arms. I assured her that Karen was used to seeing Muslims.

Again, she promised to pick Karen up. But first, she said, she would have to pray. A mission of such importance couldn't be undertaken without the prior performance of two rak'at, or cycles of formal prayer.

I said I understood, feeling crassly secular. I was also incredulous. Could this crisis be overcome so easily?

I allowed a whole day to pass before I called again. Again, it was Mrs A who answered. Was everything all right, I asked nervously.

Then, on the third day, they became uneasy. In an indefinable way, Karen was not quite right. (Again, it is a mistake to assume there are unambiguous symptoms.)

And finally, after a fortnight, they realised they couldn't cope. For Karen had become increasingly erratic — walking out on them, in defiance of entreaties to stay, and then calling them, usually from a railway station, and asking to be picked up again.

It wasn't until after Karen had been sent back to New Zealand by her rescuers, admitted to a psychiatric hospital and treated for schizophrenia, that we saw the "logic" in this strange behaviour.

She had, she said, been convinced the world was against her. This meant that any advice she received was, as a matter of course, contrary to her interests. Thus, if someone said "Please stay" they clearly had some sinister reason for not wanting her to go.

So she would leave — only to find she lacked the means to support herself. She would then be forced to ask for help. And so it went on.

But this acute, psychotic phase of the illness, in which the sufferer experiences a range of delusions, and sometimes hears insulting voices, is often comparatively short, as modern anti-psychotic medications can bring a person back to "reality" remarkably quickly.

It is the other symptoms of the illness — called "negative symptoms", to distinguish them from the "positive symptoms" just described — that are sometimes more difficult to deal with.

These negative symptoms include "flattened affect" (impairment of the ability to express emotion), "poverty of speech" (saying little and rarely initiating conversation), and "avolition" (lack of will or motivation).

After treatment, there may also be some akathisia to deal with. This is a chronic restlessness caused by the medication.

It was these symptoms that concerned us most in the first six months that followed Karen's return to the family home. She seemed, at times, to have been emptied, and to need "filling up".

So we were always on the lookout for things to do, people to visit, and short, easy courses to take. Realistic social, artistic and academic goals were set, and then achieved, as we tried to rebuild our daughter.

Other things helped: Cutting the medication, as soon as it seemed possible to safely do so, was one. Convincing Karen of the need to avoid all other drugs — including alcohol, nicotine and caffeine — was another. Keeping a cuddly pet, to act as an amusing diversion, was yet another.

Above all, we have tried to resist the temptation to scold Karen, and have tried to see the problems that arise in connection with her illness as purely practical matters — to be approached analytically and, if possible, solved.

A complete recovery is probably out of the question, but a reasonably productive, happy life is not.

A lot hinges, of course, on the person's success in re-entering the workforce. Ironically, Karen sometimes had more success in applying for jobs when she was psychotic, because her personality was perceived, in the context of an interview, as more dynamic at that time. Only months before she was hospitalized, she survived an exceptionally rigorous screening process and landed a position with a company in central Auckland.

Now she is at a disadvantage. For although she is more capable and qualified, she has a history of psychiatric illness.