Male suicide prevention charity, the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), have launched a free web-chat service offering support, information and signposting to men who are depressed or in crisis.
From today, the service will be open daily between 6pm – 9pm. Users within the UK will be able to chat anonymously and confidentially to trained helpline staff.
Within the next eight week’s, the charity said the web-chat service hours will be extended to match those of its telephone helpline — from 5pm to midnight.
CALM said that research with their supporters identified a need to offer online provision, alongside their helpline and texting service, in order to make accessing support easier to a younger male audience.
Suicide is the leading killer of men aged 20-49 in the UK, and has overtaken coronary heart disease as a killer in older men aged up to 50. The latest statistics show that 77% of all suicides in the UK were male.
CALM said its telephone helpline takes around 4,000 calls a month.
The web-chat can be accessed on the CALM website: www.thecalmzone.net/get-help
By Dan Bell
Photo courtesy: Mic445
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Little steps that count.
Really pleased to see this and will distribute. Generally in the health service we seem to rely heavily on a sort of “family” model wherein the more frequent contact with health services by mothers is the route to draw in other family members. However as people of both sexes more frequently live alone, work full time etc. etc. There really is a need to think again about how people can engage with health services early enough for it to make a difference. Great to see new things being tried.
It is perhaps one of the greatest fallacies that males have fewer feelings. If that were true our society wouldn’t have to put such effort into teaching men how to suppress and hide them!
That’s great, thanks for passing on the news Nigel.
Dan
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