Samaritans Avis 

Absolute disgrace the Samaritan help button on Itchen Bridge in Southampton does NOT work and they do not respond. It is very unfair to have this button for people like myself and advertise it next to the button and at other points only to find in your hour of absolute despair that they do not respond and I tried the button 6 times today myself. THIS BUTTON NEEDS TO BE REMOVED. Even the 999 button got no response from Southampton Police. How utterly disgusting. It shows how little suicidal people are thought of by Hampshire Police and the Samaritans so please don't go up there if you are at risk because you may be ignored like I was. The police drove straight past me after I had pressed the 999 button. I'm totally despairing at the lack of interest by the police in particular. They are supposed to be law abiding about vulnerable adults but they would rather nick someone for a silly offence on social media. What are we paying them for exactly ? Hampshire police you are a disgrace failing the communities you are paid to protect. I'm extremely upset but not surprised. Bet they would stop for one of their colleagues.

Some are understanding some are judgemental I had to phone 4 times to get a none judgemental person.i went for a walk and left my ten Yr old with her dad I was told I should go home it's not usual for a mum to just leave I didnt she was well cared for. Sometimes they MAKE ME FEEL WORSE but they are all I have

Absolutely bloody brilliant, I just spoke to a lady who reassured me of everything I was worried about. Spoke to me through family problems and was just absolutely lovely. These reviews who say not good things about them are talking poop, everyone here is here to help and genuinely wants to, I can absolutely tell that everyone here cares. Thank you to the lady from this morning(:

If I could give none I would. no one ever answers no matter what time of day or night. Complete rip off. Disgusting.

First time using this service and felt very awkward doing so but thought I’d try at a time I felt defeated, sad/angry. First Lady seemed quite off-ish, low tone with a bit of a “can’t be bothered” feel, but I took no notice as I didn’t know what to expect. I had to actually go quiet at one point to see if, although she is there to listen, whether she would give me anything back, she did a little bit but I respected she couldn’t give advice or much of a personal opinion. There was then a delay which messed with the quality of the call so it ended after about 10 mins or so. I called back and got put through to another woman, she was a little more responsive and empathetic, she sounded older so maybe it came with her experience of life or the job, but after 25 mins she cut me short and said “well I’ll leave the call there and you call back in the future” which took me back a little as I didn’t realise it was time limited. It made me feel embarrassed as if I had used her time up or was talking too much so I don’t think I will use this service any more, it’s a shame but I’d rather feel uplifted at the end of a call. Samaritans need to tread carefully here, with people with mental health conditions I believe she could have stated it better if she did have to help others like “well you’ve done a great job explaining this much to me is there any resources you would think could be helpful to you that maybe I could signpost you to or tell you of? (ie mental health charities etc) that would have been more professional. I get they are not therapy or professional nhs workers but a scripted plan towards wanting to end the call would suffice way better than just cutting me short. Take note Samaritans

Called them twice in two weeks. No one answered the phoner neither they called me back. Disgusting, making people believe they have someone to talk to when they don’t even answer the phone.

What are waste of space this organization is very few far between people actually want to help on Samaritans I think a lot of them are just there to say they are Samaritan but don't really care about people that they're talking to this is my personal opinion nobody has to listen

Spoke to a lady (and I say that lightly)who straight off bat become abusive. I was belittled and made to feel how disgusting I am. She then started shouting at me saying that human trafficking does not exist, then promptly hung up. I then rang to make a complaint. Not to long after a woman rang me about my complaint. My 14 year old child was then with me at the time. She was then asked why my child wasn’t at school. I then started to explain that my child had a doctors appointment because of issues with painful joints and bones which my doctor is trying to get to the bottom of. I now regret telling her about my child as I don’t know what that has anything to do with anything. So if you want to feel like your in an episode of black mirror then the Samaritans are place to ring!

I rang Samaritans in Northampton roughly around 1am/1.30am into Saturday the 18th of May 2025. My head was full and I had served anxiety. I tried to engage/ talk with a female helper, Who sounded like she was in her late 40s/50s. She did not talk to me, her tone was rude. Didn't say who she was, and didn't asked for my name. During the conversation I was having with myself. The lady just went umm , occasionally throughout the conversation. She then ended the call abruptly herself, by saying do you feel better yet?. While I was still talking. Like I was disturbing her from painting her nails 💅 or reading a magazine, she sounded bored and was rude from the moment she answered my call...After not listening to a word I was saying. I said yes, with that, the lady put the phone down. I felt so stupid for ringing, and never will again. For a lady to just say umm occasionally through out the call and nothing else. I felt like I had bored her. She gave no advice and made it clear she was not listening. But to cut me off when I have never rang this service before, for help made me feel ten times worse, than I did before. For that lady to say, while I was talking. " Right do you think you feel better now" ?. I just said yes, knowing and feeling even more unwelcome on the phone. With that the lady didn't say goodbye or anything, and I didn't get a chance to in return. As she put the phone down. How this lady left me feeling for the rest of night, was awful, her attitude was bad, un-interested. I will never ring the service again. This has really put me of from seeking help from any telephone service. Regards. Ps' I'm female, regardless of the name I'm under....If I cld I wld not of given this lady/ the service, a star ⭐... Awful attitude 😔. Yet mental health service's are becoming harder to find...with all the government cuts, waiting lists etc...

What I don't get is why the Samaritans is on top everyone's list suggesting the Samaritans and they cannot even answer the phone? and if for any reason the Samaritans were short of stuff, how on earth they would not call back like anyone gets a missed call on their phones??!!! Rotten entity.

A lot of people, for various genuine reasons, prefer to talk to female volunteers and there just aren’t enough of them available to talk to at night. It can take several tries at 3 am to get through to a female voice, after a string of male ones, and the wait-times for any one call are already naturally protracted at that time.

I feel like anyone who calls the samaritans isn't in a good way, myself included. I was actually on the verge of suicide.

I called and I spoke to Andy. I was suicidal before I called. The patience and empathy these guys have in incredible. I told Andy a whole host of problems I was having, however, the calm understanding advice he had for me was literally life changing. He sat on the phone with me for an hour while I cried, laughed, and pondered.

While I mentally kept bringing myself down, Andy brought me back up. I never made it easy, as anyone in my position would do. Andy, thank you.

I just wanted to talk about my one and only good experience with samaritans. the lady, Helen, spoke to me very gently and made me feel very held and listened to. I've had plenty of bad experiences with samaritans in the past, but if Helen is reading this, I just want her to know she really helped me feel calm tonight. thankyou darling.

Disgusting. I’ve been dealing with severe anxiety and depression for multiple years and I would call Samaritans because they helped me when I would hyperventilate. I recently tried to ring them to find out my number has been blocked. Do you know how disgusting that is? Your a 24/7 emotional support line that quite frankly doesn’t offer support. You just sit there listen then say you’ve been on the phone to long. You lot really need to consider changing your approach and actually get some younger people in because these OAP’s that you lot hsve and very inconsiderate. Honestly f this service i don’t advise to anybody.

I contacted samaritans to get support over my depression and low self esteem that I have and am going through and like everyone else within 10 minutes of the call the talk ended with no support provided

Never will ring samaritans again as most of the volunteers are narcissistics gaslighting you and patronising you and only doing it for there own ego boost to make them look good and ive had volunteers slamming the phone down on me they said there is other callers i was in the middle of speaking while that was said rude should be focussed on the caller not on the next call and you wouldnt believe me if i told you what a volunteer said while i was ODing i wanted to take more she said well you should of took more in the first place then it would of worked i was shocked and took back that she was encouraging me no empathy not fit for purpose suprised samaritans is still going with the amount of bad narcisstic volunteers as theyll pull it down then the good volunteers dont get noticed

Absolutely useless, took over 10 mins to answer my call for help and by then I'm ready to smash my hand and head up, thank you for your support, what a waste of time

Just tried opening up explaining what my problems were but he couldn't wait to finish the phone call and made me feel very uncomfortable like he didn't really want to listen or care and felt it was a waste of time,it was really hard fr me to reach out too I hope noone else has to suffer the same way.

I needed to talk and be heard. That's exactly what I got. Thank you David. 5* I will definitely be signposting others to this service.

New volunteers expected to do all kinds of days and hours, and at least 3 hrs a week with at least 1 overnight shift every 3 months. This is incompatible with those who have children to care for and also work full time. Even those who don't have kids and work full time have difficulty managing this. This skews the listener volunteer demographic to mainly middle class retirees with cars, own homes, few financial worries, out of touch/can't relate with the current state of social services, government agencies and working class people problems. They do this for an ego boost, only work hours that are comfortable for them, leaving unsocial hours to new or a few very committed volunteers.

Majority of callers are lonely older people who don't work and aren't close to their families for various reasons; lonely people who have difficulties socialising for various reasons; angry people shouting down the phone being belligerent/sarcastic about the volunteer's inability to solve their money/housing/job/relationship problems for them. Female volunteers get a lot of male sex pests calling up to masturbate to fantasies about sex involving rape and children. A lot of prisoners call as well and when they encounter female listeners, a large proportion of them want to talk about sex. Female volunteers are encouraged to "explore feelings" with these men because they must have been "traumatised" to act this way. Samaritans callers are now routed nationally across UK and Ireland so get a fair few callers with thick accents that are very challenging to make sense of, making it difficult to understand/converse/"help" them. Very rarely are there truly suicide calls, but many bored/lonely regular callers will claim to be suicidal to keep the volunteer on the line.

Deteriorating NHS services mean that more callers with serious mental health issues are redirected to Samaritans whenever NHS mental services are closed/overwhelmed. Many callers are in the midst of a serious mental health crisis - upset/angry, psychotic, incoherent callers blaming the world for their ills, threatening to do something violent to whomever is living with them to "fix" their issues. Samaritans can do nothing unless caller gives address+name, which never happens as callers are often paranoid about police/doctors.

The in-house training is 6 weeks of group classes using standardised teaching material from Samaritans HQ which teaches the "listening wheel" and the stepped approach to discussing suicide with callers. After group class training, training is then conducted 1:1 by so-called "mentors" - mostly old-timers in the branch who listen in on conversations new volunteers take, telling them what to say. Caller numbers are auto-logged by HQ. Any personal details given by callers are stored in HQ servers too. Zero consistency in how mentors teach because they were trained ages ago, answering phones in their own way. It's all very vague - basically if a trainee gells well with their mentor and don't question the flaws in the system, then he/she will be approved as a volunteer. There are branch politics/unspoken hierarchy/cliques - everyone keeps quiet about bullying/makes snide remarks - the only solution is for the person picked on to resign. Some volunteers seem to weirdly derive pleasure when sharing callers' sexual/relationship problems to other volunteers (and whomever).

It's all very superficial. Samaritans are taught to never give advice; never disclose anything, i.e. never agree with the caller on any opinion/preference, even if they did. While old-timers get away with saying what they like, new Samaritans are chastised if conversations aren't focused only on caller's "feelings" - no "chatting" with callers about anything else - must allow more silences so "callers can talk more". All this can result in a cold, unempathic, unnatural conversation style. Few people who aren't trained counsellors can talk like this without sounding stunted and unemotional. Doesn't suit callers who aren't "talkers", and not effective either for callers in acute states of psychosis wanting to do something violent, which are all typical calls that Samaritans get. The Samaritans approach uses aspects of Carl Roger's Person-Centred therapy but can't build long term relationships with callers to help them improve/change their lives. The irony is they want unpaid volunteers. If they'll only hire and pay trained counsellors, the service quality could be improved.

Campaign for a better NHS, social services, government, etc. that make a difference. Not this. This is a vain attempt to show donors they’re doing “something”. Every Conservative’s wet dream is to defund public services and direct everyone affected to the Samaritans.