Facts and figures

Facts and figures

Every 5 seconds, someone makes contact with Samaritans.

Every 10 seconds, Samaritans receives a contact in which someone feels able to speak, type or write about their feelings.

Every 57 seconds, Samaritans receives a contact from someone who has suicidal feelings.

Numbers of contacts to Samaritans

In 2010 Samaritans received 4,957,574 contacts, by phone, email, text, letter, minicom, Typetalk, face-to-face at a branch, and at local and national festivals and other events.

Means of contacting Samaritans in 2010

  • 85.2% (2,316,949) of dialogue contacts were made by phone
  • 188,448 responses were made to contacts by email.
  • 168,543 responses were made to contacts by SMS
  • 27,565 were face to face contacts in branches 
  • 17,727 were face to face contacts outside branches

Information Resource Pack

The Information Resource Pack 2011 contains facts and figures about our service in 2010.

Suicide statistics 2009

This leaflet includes statistics on trends in suicide in each of the nations within the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Download Samaritans Suicide Statistics 2011

Samaritans volunteers

There were a total of 18,746 volunteers in 2010 including:

  • 15,420  active volunteers
  • 1,910 temporarily inactive volunteers
  • 1,416 support and shop volunteers

There is an average of 86 listening volunteers in each of the 202 branches in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

  • 1,447 volunteers were involved in outreach and public awareness work in 2010
  • 3,910 new volunteers completed their training in 2010

Number of volunteers compared to number of callers

Dialogue contacts against number of Samaritans volunteers 1992 - 2010
See larger image

 

Suicidal contacts

  • In 20.3% of all dialogue contacts to Samaritans, the caller expressed suicidal feelings at the time of the call.
  • In 42.9% of email contacts to Samaritans, the caller expressed suicidal feelings at that time.
  • In 52.2% of text contacts to Samaritans, the caller expressed suicidal feelings at that time.

Method of contact 2010

Samaritans dialogue contacts in 2010

More statistics about Samaritans

Samaritans Suicide Statistics for 2009

 

Contact

For more information please contact Elizabeth Scowcroft, Research Officer on e.scowcroft@samaritans.org