Samaritans Reviews 364

Many of them seem to prefer you being really low and self-destructive. Randomly ask if you're suicidal, when you say no they sound disappointed. Asking this when you're just talking generally is upsetting and inappropriate. I've mentioned this and they answer in a nonchalant way. Think it's a typically British toxic organisation. One guy even said you shouldn't call if you're not suicidal. Wrong! So few show any care or empathy and many seem to want the 'gossip'. Sometimes it's an interrogation, which is just rude. What's my job for example got to do with anything? Gave it 2 stars as occasionally I get a gem which is wonderful and can really. I end the conversation with the uncaring ones and call back. Pretty ridiculous all round, it's dangerous and as I say toxic to have screwed up people taking calls. They need to call in some time. Honestly, mental health services are horrendous in this country. Judgemental, nasty people are rife across them.

Just got over the text with them and all they did was guilt trip

They need a name change from the Samaritans into the Hypocrites that they are in practice. The money they get from gullible donations and their own contacts in the upper echelons of bs.
Goes towards funding their abusive volunteers. Just stop and think about that for a moment . What kind of twisted individual gives up their time to deflate and devalue the troubles of another?
Both volunteers I talked to this morning were obnoxious and not fit to deal with others outside of the ideology breaking the soul of others or trying to.
As they profiteer out of their own double standards they are only fit to be a charity in a class locked dysfunctional society like the UK .
Apparently they are not supposed to judge others but when I told someone who sounded like Benny’s relative from Cross Rds about my recent troubles she says I must have done something to bring it on myself and had no empathy when I said I’d got bevied to escape the weight of my thoughts,
The next volunteer I spoke to asked some very personal questions had no empathy about someone struggling to open up and for no reason at all said she was not a counsellor. I never asked her to be when I said I was sure she was not the Queen of Eng either she could not take her own med and slammed the phone down .
A horrible institution that will no doubt get closed down eventually once they have done too much at the expense of

I called them at 4am this morning, the person on the phone helped me breathe and then talked me through what was going, and was very reassuring, they asked about what else was going on, because it was clear that what started my panic attack was "the straw that broke the cammels back" I got very overwhelmed by this question, but they were very patient and when I was able to talk again, they were very attentive and reassuring.

It's a shame these hotlines are so stigmatized, because there are so many times in the past where I would have really benefitted from this service.

I used to be a samaritan myself so understood the ethos etc.. however, when I found myself lonely and in crisis the twice I rang in one evening and the two separate " listeners " did not listen at all! Both times they seemed bored, cold and uninterested. Such a shame.

i rang in because i was extremely upset and felt completely isolated and alone in terms of my health issues. i am experiencing extreme isolation and depression because i physically cannot do much anymore and i told the lady that i have several physical symptoms that cannot be anxiety yet the doctors always brush me off and refuse testing because they say im a young woman so its likely anxiety.

the lady then said “yeah it does seem like youre having panic attacks”

…. i rang in because i felt invalidated about my health issues that i KNOW are not anxiety, just to be further invalidated. its almost comedic irony

Absolutely useless. It’s a messed up world when suicidal people are palmed off with this worthless crap and receive no actual help. It’s a cycle and offensive

I've been traumatised so much calling this helpline that just the voice automated call at the start of the call triggers me. It's an appalling service with people who want to cause harm to you. When you point out that they aren't supporting you just asking questions they have a bad attitude said they have listened and just want end the call.
Support is empathising, understanding & validating someones feelings. I dont think anyone working there knows what that means?
Some people on these lines are also abusive themselves, make you feel safe to open up only initially by being friendly to be treated like sh**. It irritates me when people who haven't used this service speaks highly of them when they are purely out to make profit and hit targets of number of calls, not caring about the peoples lives they are destroying. They don't even deserve the 1 star. Maybe change your name? Certainly haven't spoken to a good samaritan calling you.

The usual British disease I’m afraid “Lions led by Donkeys”. Result… ALL Donkeys!

Be careful ringing Smartains too many times. They end up blocking you for 30 days. Leave you feeling more suicidal and distressed.

Samaritas are not to be trusted, they have tried to persuade me into taking my own life, they lie about confidentiality, they are prejudicial, Samaritas are a true reflection of how corrupt and duplicitous the world can be, if you try to talk about your own life experience they often challenge and say this couldn't of happened, regarding my early and current life, sad they are not what they should be, if you complain they block your number too, sad, sad, sad.

Got a suicidal urge today so I called Samaritans in the hopes of feeling better - they never picked up. I and many others call because we are in DIRE NEED of support, and to be met with nothing but the endless ringing of the phone makes you feel even more hopeless. Some life-saving charity, I think I'll just end it next time I get the urge!

Amazing, so kind ❤️

The last series of calls I made to them in the vein hope of finding some emotional reprieve from the lower periods of bi polar. Were unsatisfactory and all counter productive. As I sated before they seem to love fixating on drastic determinations leading to an ultimate end. Yes I'm aware we are a nation with more people then resources for their needs. However those of us born and bred here are seen as no more then cattle. By those of a higher station like those who work the Samaritans .

The calls were handled in an antagonist and procedural manner. With the person on the other end of the line looking to be off hand at various interjections of our interaction. They would follow up their compassionate tone, one that lulled me into being vulnerable. Inciting me to share my feelings and concerns in relation to living life,
with a barrage of deflating comments or reactions .
The way they timed it , they way they worked it seemed far too premediated , for it not to be a one off. In fact I have been obstructed from emotional support on a number of calls. They worked it like the best boxer in the gym sparring with a novice who just happened to walk in from the street.

An example of this with one of them. Was when the call was about to end naturally. After I was feeling a bit better , they then become very abrupt at that point . They began to express their impatience , even though I was not begging for more time or off on any tangent or anything like that . It was almost like the person had a personality transplant as they shifted down their gears of compassion and empathy. Started to say a number of deflating things and then asked me a final question when I attempted to reply she , cut in with that's the end of the call". So she asked me a profound question and would not give me the agency to complete so much as a sentence ?? . Not only is that weird it is shocking that this is the standard sam in a nutshell.
I was not saying anything vulgar and was the same through out the call unlike the so called volunteer who appeared to have some personality issues . When I mentioned that she had intrusted me and not let me finish . She then snapped "Well !!! Go on then!! ". I put the phone down at that point and will never risk my emotional state and call again.
As others say they don't seem to care how they leave a caller , or have any self awareness or self discipline in relation to their more advantageous. position . As others state the barr seems to be very low to go through and be put out on the phone.

In the meantime the Samaritans can creatively show those in real power how their call numbers are high and people are in need of their service. As we have terrible short sighted people at the top. They can just veto the Sarmatians to carry on with their farce. Offering them more and more public prominence for a non service that fails far too many. There is not so much as a survey after a call ends for a caller to rate their experience. That shows the value they place on callers . From their tone and scripted responses it appears that callers are there to make up the numbers which add up to the managers income.
A few volunteers perhaps hopping that by playing along with this set up they will get a promo into such a lucrative position .

On a side note I also noticed that all calls I had with them during August, Had interference with the call cutting out and back in .As if someone was listening in at points. Sometimes the volunteer would try to prompt me to say controversial things about society but I never took the bait , sometimes this prompted the volunteer to say off colour things . To fill that void when I joked about it being monitored they showed some humanity but only for themselves. They sounded panicked. On one occasion I finished a call and then made a separate phone call to a friend I then heard some recording saying this call is being recorded and no that never happened before on my phone or with my provider.
After that I always restarted my device after my final calls.

In closure over my final appraisal of this non service. During this year I had only two calls which were great, where I felt the person was a safe pair of ears to hear my reality and impowering to talk to . but those one's always cut out when we were having a good interaction. Those calls tended to be with women of my own age who had bucked the robotic script bound format the 1 per cent . Funny how those two satisfactory calls ended abruptly but the disempowering ones never cut out and lasted the full odious distance.
Maybe the male volunteers at head office got triggered when they heard another man who could talk to women as fellow human beings . Not in the objectifying way some of their seniors did and prob still do.

We make regular financial donations to this charity which we believe supports local community and the work this charity does , we also support their shops , yet on numerous occassions we started to notice that financial donations we were making were being taken twice or we were being charged double or three times a single payment made to this chatity when we donated via card transactions, which we did often, upon noticing this we brought this to the attention of the volunteers as we thought there maybe a fault with the operating system they were using , these volunteers acknowledged the
double payments but did not offer us the over payments return, we would of been happy to dismiss the extra charges where we paid double or more as we do not begrudge the charity the money but we would of appriciated acknowledgement that these extra payments were not only taken without authorisation but also without our knowledge and were taken incorrectly or mistakingly , yet these payments were not offered to be reimburst even tho we would of gladly not accepted the offer and would of told the charity to keep the extra payments as a donation it would of been nice to of had the option and offer or acknowledgement that a problem was occuring instead of it being dismissed and expecting us to not persue it. For these reasons we have withdrawn our financial suppport to this charity completly and feel our support was not appriciated while they had it, we also discovered that we were not the only ones expierencing this same issue and that in the area that this occured the charity was "closing down" as well as their charity shops in the general area and they were attempting to rake in as much finances as possible before hand as the volunteers had been pressurised from further up the chain to acheive this by any means possible. Unfortunatly for this charity the loss they encounteted by us withdrawing our support was far greater than what they would of otherwise had from us if they had only not been so greedy to retain what they aquired incorrectly and just acknowledged what was occuring which we were able to easily prove, they harmed no one else but themselves and their own charity and have no one else to blame but themselves for closing down in the circumstances they were in.

As daughter of murdered consultant psychiatrist, I have to write of how surprised & concerned I am to be treated by more than one Samaritan over a number of years. I was told me the number of minutes I was speaking! do they only have a set time to listen? Whilst this is cruel & unprofessional merely makes me more upset leaving me crying, it could cause others to take their lives & as a psychiatrist's daughter, this is why I present my concerns about this. Reading other people's experiences of this service, the vast majority of users have had a very negative experience. Surely this can be made better, to some people calling the Samaritans it may be a last hope in a desperate situation. I as the others giving their bad testimonies will carry on- but in tears over that call. I have been bullied; harassed; physically assaulted; one GBH requiring the input of a surgeon for injuries I sustained being thrown backwards on to a stone wall when trying to protect my grieving widowed Father from further financial intimidation from one source over the FRAUD in both parents' wills that the executor colluded over with an indebt non beneficiary; a fraud that took 3 years before I trusted my instinct as my Father told me to always do, & got out solicitors notes & the real wills only from police intervention by call handlers from breaches of peace at DND law & Donard King law.
3 counts of fruad, worsened by the 3 counts of serious professional negligence that a jn I year 10month solicitor KO had carried out at our family law firm of 4 generations- brought in both the Action Fraud & the NFIB's writing to me & our police to investigate about what AF stated ''this is SO SERIOUS, I'm red-flagging this up as urgent to the NFIB'' in June 2017. The family Minister saw the fruad who was told by Jonathon Coen from our family law firm that they didn't want to go back to court & were going to 'settle out of court''. I told the Minister (crying at the fraud so many legals piggybacked off over 3 yrs & the 4th yr my grieving widowed Dad & I endured from the executor's collusion over it to assist their indebt non beneficiary school friend) ''you don't settle for fraud''? Seeing the pages of fruad that solicitors & their counsels had written to one another in the 13th file that was said not to have existed when I asked for it, & the real wills of our parents in that copy file; the Minister said ''I know; its pretty bad''. This was brought in to CIVIL court without my knowledge I understand in Nov 2015 my sister signing probate after she (executrix) & our family law firm were told through me by police inspector on even more fruad being sent to me as credit card fruad in my honourable Father's name, 'nothing goes further; no probate granted & no monies released'. I learned for first time from head of Chancery at end of March 2016 the case was in high court, my sister having signed probate made her defendant, whilst Damien Smith from DND law submitted by name fraudulently to that court as a plaintiff. His emails to & from Roger Dowd his barrister explains they were aware of the fruad from finding out about the 'clandestine meetings' being held at the family law firm with Gerry O Hare- who our brother attended who I am advised had a conflict being apprenticed to our brother's mother in laws legal firm. Despite all fraud laid bare on court bench in June 2017; the Action Fraud's Directors letter sent in July that yr & the NFIB's Directors letter sent on in Sept that yr were each made to 'go away' NO INVESTIGATIONS WERE TO BE MADE! The fraudulent will was then taken back in to civil court & I was threatened by Miss Mc Bride 'if I didn't take this case she would put me out of my home & sell it'! shocked witnesses to prove this- minister reported Miss Mc Bride to 101 stating he had seen the fruad & of the offer to settle out of court to him'. One month before I was due to take the case under her threat, I opened a letter to my dead Father- (his death now proven medically as MURDER,) from a share co. he had shares in advising him of the 3 fig pecuniary gain he had made from share sales made when he was 3 yrs 7 months murdered! Read aloud in court in April 2018 this caused audible concern to my bro & clearly to those continuing the same fruad proven to have been used in murder for the £200,000 sought by non benef. on my Father's death. AF & NFIB's 4th request for PSNI investigation has been ignored since April 2018. I've been bullied; harassed; physically assaulted; terrorised from 11pm in the security of my family home & all by - POLICE as this id fruad will prove 'who' is enabling such serious fruad to continue in a civil court, why & how. Entrapped in to 6 arrests & 12 prosecutions by a Sgt since Sept 2018 to SILENCE me, I was LOCKED IN CELL for 26.5 hours in June 2019 as Ms Mc Bride took the fraudulent Will in civil court without me, contrary to nijudiciary I'net!

This should not be called emotional support it shud be called the venting line if you want to vent about your problems then ring this they ll listen and at the end of the call you still have the same problem so this line is pointless there’s no point in keeping this line running I wudnt even give them 1 star if I didn’t have to!!!!!!

I entered their training with a sterling track record and the requisite qualities they claimed they required in volunteers. Found some of the "so-called" trainers judgmental, unempathetic, and in practice, gave contradictory advice and messages. Not an organisation I could ever feel a commitment to. Understand why callers are often left frustrated and unheard.

Not worth the hassle called as not feeling myself and think I would be better off being dead and got told to call shelter line which was no help at all. Lack of food intake is making me sick due to being homeless and no one cares