If you need help right now
Use one of these. They are free, they answer at any hour of any day, and you do not have to be certain that it is serious enough.
Emergency services
Call 99924 hours, every day
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, or a life is at risk, call 999 now.
NHS 111 — mental health option
Call 11124 hours, every day
Free NHS urgent mental health support. Call 111 and select the mental health option to speak to a trained adviser.
Samaritans
Call 116 12324 hours, every day
Free, confidential listening for anyone in distress. You do not have to be suicidal to call.
If you cannot speak on the phone, text SHOUT to 85258. It is free, confidential and answered around the clock. Every other service, including domestic abuse lines and support for under-19s, is listed further down this page.
If you are not sure
Working out how urgent this is
There is no threshold you have to reach before you are allowed to ask for help. Services would far rather hear from you early than late. If you are genuinely unsure, treat it as more urgent rather than less.
Call 999 now if
- You have seriously harmed yourself, or taken an overdose.
- You feel unable to keep yourself safe in the next few minutes or hours.
- Someone else is in immediate danger.
- Somebody is unconscious, bleeding heavily, or has stopped breathing properly.
An overdose of anything — including paracetamol, which can cause serious harm many hours later while you still feel fine — needs medical assessment straight away. Do not wait to see how you feel.
Call 111 if
- Your thoughts frighten you, but you are not in immediate danger.
- You do not know what kind of help you need.
- It is the middle of the night and you cannot wait until morning.
- You are worried about somebody else and want advice from someone trained.
Call 111 and choose the mental health option. It is free, it is answered day and night, and it can arrange urgent NHS mental health support where that is what is needed.
Contact your GP if
- Things have been getting worse over weeks rather than hours.
- You are struggling with medication, or think it needs reviewing.
- You want a referral, or a note for work, or a physical health check alongside all this.
Most surgeries keep urgent same-day appointments. Say when you ring that it is about your mental health — you do not have to explain it to the receptionist in any detail.
The full list
Free UK services, and what each one is for
All of these are national, established and free to call. The first three are repeated from the top of the page on purpose — nobody should have to scroll back up to find a number.
Emergency services
99924 hours, every day
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, or a life is at risk, call 999 now.
NHS 111 — mental health option
11124 hours, every day
Free NHS urgent mental health support. Call 111 and select the mental health option to speak to a trained adviser.
Samaritans
116 12324 hours, every day
Free, confidential listening for anyone in distress. You do not have to be suicidal to call.
Shout
Text SHOUT to 8525824 hours, every day
Free, confidential text-message support — useful if speaking aloud feels impossible.
National Domestic Abuse Helpline
0808 2000 24724 hours, every day
Run by Refuge. Free and confidential support for anyone experiencing domestic abuse.
Men's Advice Line
0808 801 0327Monday to Friday, 10am–5pm
Run by the charity Respect. Confidential support for men experiencing domestic abuse. A webchat is also available on weekday mornings.
Papyrus HOPELINE247
0800 068 414124 hours, every day
Confidential suicide-prevention advice for people under 35 and those worried about them.
Childline
0800 111124 hours, every day
Free, confidential support for anyone under 19.
Mind Infoline
0300 102 1234Monday to Friday, 9am–6pm, except bank holidays
Information on mental health problems, treatments, medication and your rights, plus signposting to local support.
Several of these services can also be reached in writing, which some people find far easier than speaking. Samaritans take letters and emails as well as calls at samaritans.org (opens in a new tab), and Shout is a text-message service throughout at giveusashout.org (opens in a new tab).
While you wait
Two things that can help you get through the next few minutes
These will not fix what is causing the distress and they are not a substitute for calling somebody. They are for steadying yourself enough to make the call, or to get from now until the morning.
Five, four, three, two, one
A sensory grounding exercise. It works by giving your attention something ordinary and external to hold on to, which interrupts the loop for long enough to let your body settle.
- Name five things you can see. Say them out loud if you can, or under your breath. The lamp. The door handle. A mark on the carpet.
- Name four things you can feel. The chair under you, the floor through your feet, the fabric of your sleeve, the temperature of the air.
- Name three things you can hear. Traffic outside, a fridge humming, your own breathing.
- Name two things you can smell. If you cannot smell anything, name two smells you like.
- Name one thing you can taste, or one thing you are glad exists.
If your mind wanders, start again from five. Finishing is not the point; the counting is.
Paced breathing
Panic makes breathing fast and shallow, which makes panic worse. Deliberately lengthening the out-breath breaks that circuit.
- Sit or stand with both feet flat on the floor, and let your shoulders drop.
- Breathe in through your nose while you count slowly to four.
- Hold for a count of two. Skip this part if holding feels uncomfortable.
- Breathe out through your mouth for a count of six, so the out-breath is clearly longer than the in-breath.
- Repeat for a minute or two. A longer out-breath is what nudges the body out of alarm — it is not a trick, it is physiology.
If you start to feel light-headed, stop and let your breathing return to normal. Do not force it, and do not do this while driving.
If it is not you
Supporting somebody who is struggling
Most people who find this page are looking on behalf of a partner, a parent or a child. You do not need training to be useful, and you are not responsible for fixing it.
Ask directly
Ask whether they are thinking about suicide, using the word. Asking does not put the idea into somebody's head — this is one of the most consistently supported findings in suicide prevention, and being asked plainly usually comes as a relief rather than a shock.
Listen far more than you advise
You do not need the right words and there probably are not any. Staying, not flinching, and not rushing to fix it does more than a good sentence would.
Do not promise total secrecy
Say something honest instead: “I will not tell people who do not need to know, but I am not going to try to keep you safe entirely on my own.” Promising silence puts the whole weight on you and takes options away from them.
Make the means harder to reach
Where you reasonably can, put distance between the person and whatever they might use — medication, alcohol, sharp things, car keys. Crises often pass in hours, and delay genuinely saves lives.
Do not leave them alone if the danger is now
Stay with them, or arrange for somebody else to, while help is on the way. If there is immediate danger call 999 and say clearly that it is a mental health emergency.
Look after yourself too
Supporting somebody in crisis is frightening and exhausting. Samaritans take calls from people worried about someone else, not only from people in distress themselves. You are allowed to ring them for you.
If somebody is in danger right now
Call 999 and say it is a mental health emergency. Stay on the line and stay with the person if it is safe to do so. If they have taken something, tell the operator what it was and roughly how much, and keep the packet if you have it.
Being straight with you
Family Restore is not a crisis service
This matters more than anything else on the page, so it is said plainly rather than buried in a policy.
- Family Restore Ltd is a planned, appointment-based private practice. The phone and the inbox are checked during consulting hours only, and the typical reply is within one working day.
- There is no out-of-hours cover, no on-call rota, no emergency appointment service, no medication, no Mental Health Act assessment and no home visiting.
- Please do not use email, voicemail or the booking form to tell us about an emergency. A message left overnight may not be read for many hours, and that delay could matter.
- If you are already a client, a plan for difficult periods is agreed with you early in the work — which service to use, in what order, and what has helped before. If that has not been written down yet, raise it at your next session.
None of this is a way of turning you away. It is so that you know exactly where the limits are before you need them, rather than at the moment you do.
Beyond the immediate
Where to get ongoing support, free of charge
Once the immediate danger has passed, the question becomes what happens next. These routes cost nothing and none of them require a private practice.
NHS Talking Therapies
In England you can refer yourself directly, without going through your GP. The services provide NICE-recommended treatments — cognitive behavioural therapy among them — for depression, anxiety, panic, post-traumatic stress, obsessive compulsive disorder and phobias. Waiting times vary by area, and some services offer a first assessment by phone within a couple of weeks.
Mind
The mental health charity. Plain-English information on diagnoses, medication and your rights, plus a network of local Minds offering peer support, groups and advocacy. Their infoline on 0300 102 1234 answers weekdays and can point you to what exists near you.
Your GP
Still the most useful single appointment for most people. A GP can review medication, rule out physical causes, refer you into secondary mental health services, and put a record on file that supports time off work if you need it. You can ask to see a particular doctor, and you can take somebody in with you.
When things are steadier, we are here
Planned therapy is a different thing from crisis support, and it works best once the immediate danger has passed. If and when you want to start that conversation, there is no rush and no obligation — you can ask a question without booking anything.
This page lists national UK services and is reviewed regularly. Numbers and availability can change; if you find something here that is out of date, please tell us so it can be corrected. Nothing on this page is a substitute for medical advice.