About Mental Illness
Need help now?
If you’re feeling suicidal, experiencing a crisis and finding it difficult to cope, you may want to consider the following options:
- Talk to family or friends. Sharing difficult thoughts and feelings can sometimes bring a sense of relief and reduce feelings of isolation. Talking to someone you know may also help them understand you better, enabling them to support you more effectively.
- You may like to talk to someone you don’t know, who is trained to provide support to people, in confidence. If so, you may consider contacting our helpline, SANEline, on 0845 767 8000. The helpline is open from 6.00pm until 11.00pm every day of the year.
- For support outside these hours, Samaritans provide confidential emotional support to anyone experiencing feelings of distress or despair. They can be contacted by phone 24 hours a day on 08457 90 90 90 or email jo@samaritans.org.
- If you are already in touch with local mental health services, it may be worth speaking to them, perhaps by contacting your GP or crisis team. Even if it is out of hours, there should be an answer phone message advising you of whom to contact in an emergency, together with other useful telephone numbers.
- If you feel suicidal and would like to see a professional urgently, your local hospital accident and emergency department might be worth visiting. There will be a duty psychologist available to assess people’s needs and assist in finding the necessary support.
- In an emergency, if you are concerned about the well-being of someone you know, and feel they are behaving in a way that puts themselves or somebody else at risk due to their mental ill-health, you could try contacting their local social services emergency duty team or the police. If it is appropriate a social worker on duty will arrange for a mental health assessment.
Relevant contact numbers should be available in a local telephone directory, or on the local Primary Care Trust website.
Useful links:
Mental Health Information
SANEline
SANEmail