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Has anyone tried these mental health lines?

DigbyDevon

Good morning everyone,

Last night I had a bit of a wobble about a long standing mental health condition and texted the "SHOUT" service. I did not get anyone on the line and gave up after 45 minutes. Looking on Reddit, it seems a lot of other people either did not get through in good time or when they did were left feeling it did not help. 

I am aware these lines are busy, esp on a sunday morning and don't always have the team behind them at such hours, but I was wondering has anyone tried any other lines? 

I tried SHOUT as it was text based and I did not want to be on the phone in a family house at 3am. It seems the other text based services seem to be for teenagers or children because apparently adults can just speak openly about their mental health on the phone in the middle of the night? 

Just to be clear to prevent confusion, I am NOT suicidal but just felt very low last night.

Many thanks for reading. 

Parents

  • I'll be blunt here (will probably get flagged again), all the text services in my experience are absolutely terrible. I see below you said you heard Shout was typing like an AI, the ironic thing is you'd do better speaking to an AI opposed to using most the text services. Big toss up between if Shout and Calm are worse, but I want to say Calm because one time on there I genuinely said "can I have a few seconds to collect my thoughts" and they kicked me out. That said I once waited 3 hours on SHOUT for nothing. The Samaritans used to have a brilliant text service but sadly discontinued it, along with emails, I'll never fathom that one and like you, I live in a house with multiple people and talking on the phone genuinely is impossible. 

    Samaritans sometimes (think I've seen it open once) have a text service open via web browser, I found that to be very good. What I like about Samaritans is that they tend to let you vent a bit before analysing the issue. Meanwhile Shout is like

    Me : I am suicidal because I have autism and unmedicated ADHD

    Shout : Have you tried finding a cure?

    Some local NHS's have a "listening service" but in my opinion those aren't great either. I phoned it once with just one concern totally unrelated to treatment, within about 2 minutes the "listener" absolutely read me the riot act on what I can't ask, can't say, can't do etc. (usual stuff regarding NHS treatments, meds, appointments). I found her so rude I sheepishly put the phone down, in hindsight, her attitude was so bad I should have told her to "f off". I know that sounds extreme but I was made to feel very small and feel like a burden, stuff like that could tip someone over the edge.

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  • I'll be blunt here (will probably get flagged again), all the text services in my experience are absolutely terrible. I see below you said you heard Shout was typing like an AI, the ironic thing is you'd do better speaking to an AI opposed to using most the text services. Big toss up between if Shout and Calm are worse, but I want to say Calm because one time on there I genuinely said "can I have a few seconds to collect my thoughts" and they kicked me out. That said I once waited 3 hours on SHOUT for nothing. The Samaritans used to have a brilliant text service but sadly discontinued it, along with emails, I'll never fathom that one and like you, I live in a house with multiple people and talking on the phone genuinely is impossible. 

    Samaritans sometimes (think I've seen it open once) have a text service open via web browser, I found that to be very good. What I like about Samaritans is that they tend to let you vent a bit before analysing the issue. Meanwhile Shout is like

    Me : I am suicidal because I have autism and unmedicated ADHD

    Shout : Have you tried finding a cure?

    Some local NHS's have a "listening service" but in my opinion those aren't great either. I phoned it once with just one concern totally unrelated to treatment, within about 2 minutes the "listener" absolutely read me the riot act on what I can't ask, can't say, can't do etc. (usual stuff regarding NHS treatments, meds, appointments). I found her so rude I sheepishly put the phone down, in hindsight, her attitude was so bad I should have told her to "f off". I know that sounds extreme but I was made to feel very small and feel like a burden, stuff like that could tip someone over the edge.

Children
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