How Samaritans Use Email

What does Samaritans do?
How does Samaritans use email?
What difference has email made?
What was learnt?
Want to find out more?

What does Samaritans do? 

Samaritans is available 24 hours a day to provide confidential emotional support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which may lead to suicide.

How does Samaritans use email? 

Samaritans launched an email service in 1999. They now receive over 2,500 emails every week, sent to jo@samaritans.org

Their email address is short, easily remembered, could be male or female and makes it feel like a real person is at the other end. Messages aren’t always answered by the same person but the thousands of volunteers who answer the emails are all known as Jo. Samaritans aims to answer all messages within 24 hours.

What difference has email made? 

In some ways email is just another medium to do the same work of supporting people in emotional need and although volunteers do receive specific training in using email, the principles and practices of giving advice are the same as by phone.

Email is often thought of as a fairly impersonal way to communicate and prone to misunderstandings due to the lack of vocal and body language cues. However, it is also a fairly anonymous way to say how you feel and some people can express their feelings better in writing than on the phone. For example, email contacts are more likely to mention having suicidal thoughts than phone callers are.

More men contact Samaritans by email than by phone. Since suicide is one of the biggest killers of men between 15 and 24, and because they often find it hard to give voice to their feelings, email is an important other way to enable them to talk in confidence. Young people generally are among those most at risk of the kind of emotional distress that can lead to suicide, but are also among those who find it hardest to talk about their feelings.

What was learnt? 

Email is a preferred means of communication for many young people and it makes it easier for them to contact Samaritans about issues that trouble them. The stigma attached to asking for help and worries about anonymity can feel less when conversing by email rather than phone.

Samaritans’ research had found that young people tended to assume that Samaritans wouldn’t be of help to them and they had only heard of the phone support side of the organisation. That’s why a major campaign called Who is Jo? went out on tv, radio, cinemas and in print, to raise awareness of the email service among young people. Previously the charity had not advertised its email service widely.

Confidentiality is important in maintaining trust, which is why the charity’s volunteers don’t have access to the actual email address used by the person they are supporting. The software that Samaritans use to manage their email system makes all conversation anonymous.

Want to find out more? 

Contact name: Michael Cobb, Press Officer, Samaritans

Website: www.samaritans.org.uk
Email:  m.cobb@samaritans.org