Do you appreciate "Signposting" or would you rather a personal response

I'm happy when someone offers me help, whatever form it takes

Sometimes links to NAS support pages are OK - there's a lot of NAS webpages  so someone posting a few clickable links helps newbies especially get useful info fast, even members who been on here for years, may forget to look there first and a link is a good reminder, of the resources

Sometimes maybe a more specific response is needed.

But we're not mind readers - and have seen many be thankful to getting help, whether that be link or more personal replies.

I somehow feel this post is a little loaded,  it may not be.  If you asked something previously and just got a load of links back - then why not just politely say that you wanted more direct answer ?

Thanks for the response, when you say "we" who are you referring to?I don't like to make any assumptions as to what is correct or not, but try and determine some form of sense by polling opinion. Often people can confuse opinions with a reality, so I didn't want to go down that route.

For instance, when you say "We're not mind readers" who are you referring to? Is this your opinion, or are there a group of people you're speaking on behalf of?

My gut instinct when I read someone's post that they're suicidal and hopeless is to reach out and make a human connection. That's me.

I find the responses which provide a link to Mind, Samaritans, or a PDF on managing mental health dismissive and unhelpful.

If this was just me, I would need to try and reframe my view of help.

If others felt this way, perhaps NAS could take that on board and modify how the advise people to help.

In that situation all NAS allows us to do is signpost you to samaritans or similar, we're not allowed to discuss things like suicidal thoughts along with a few other subjects.

In that situation all NAS allows us to do is signpost you to samaritans or similar, we're not allowed to discuss things like suicidal thoughts along with a few other subjects.