I have no idea why they label themselves as a suicide prevention service.I knew that they used to be told just to listen and not actually help people - just basically sit on the phone going "yeah, I know, that must be difficult, etc" but I thought that considering the massive funding injection from the NHS and the need for actual suicide prevention (particularly, but not exclusively, during the pandemic), they would have improved their service to, you know, actually prevent suicide.But it's not the case. Despite having an e-mail from them suggesting (albeit vaguely) that they do actually help suicidal people, they really don't. I had to call them last night (because my local NHS crisis team is about as useful as a chocolate teapot) and it was just "mmm"... "how does that make you feel?"... "mmm"... "mmm". Suicidal people generally need support and advice, or at least encouragement to find their own solutions. Yet years after a minority of more experienced Samaritans have written that they helped suicidal people by ignoring the Samaritans protocol of just sitting there like someone who doesn't know what to say (and then had to quit because they were ignoring protocol in order to save lives), it's clear that the protocol is exactly the same - yet instead of providing a proper service, the NHS just directs people to Samaritans - over 10 minutes, sometimes an hour or more, just to get someone basically saying "yeah" and "mmm" over and over. I can get that if I call up a supermarket helpline, as they're not qualified to deal with people with mental health issues - and clearly, neither are the Samaritans. I actually genuinely considered phoning up a random company that had a 24-hour helpline, but decided against it because they wouldn't have known what to say and likely wouldn't have been able to say anything useful - yet Samaritans is exactly the same!The funding given to them should have been used to fund genuine NHS mental health services with genuinely qualified and genuinely caring people (not the disinterested, ignorant, and clearly unqualified people at many NHS crisis lines). Even just a normal conversation may have helped, but the Samaritans volunteer (why are they all volunteers after the funding injection anyway?) couldn't even do that.Sadly I can imagine someone at a train station or bridge, about to throw themselves into a train, reading a Samaritans advert and calling them up for help, only to feel worse because their last-ditch call for help resulted in no support.
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