Recent successes and achievements

Samaritans' impact

• More than 2,000 people have signed up to our app for Armed Forces Veterans, which launched in October 2021.
• Our volunteers spend over 1 million hours a year responding to calls for help.
• We have a lived experience panel with over 380 members, helping us make sure our work is guided by people with lived experience of suicide or self-harm, who have been bereaved by suicide, or have used Samaritans’ services.
• We answered more than 17,000 calls from NHS and social care workers.*
• Samaritans stayed open 24/7 during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Almost 80,000 people have signed up to Samaritans’ self-help app since it launched in May 2020.
• Our trained prison Listeners responded to calls for help 25,000 times and spent over 14,000 hours supporting people in prison.
• Samaritans and Three’s ‘Better Phone Friend’ campaign reached over 2.2 million people with tips on how to be a better listener.**
• Samaritans volunteers held over 1,500 outreach events last year and raised awareness at events with over half a million attendees.
• Our social media posts were seen 100 million times and we had 2 million likes, comments and shares.

All statistics on this page relate to the 2021 calendar year, unless otherwise stated.

*Calls answered through our national helpline (116 123) or our dedicated helplines for NHS and social care workers.

**Combined PR reach for the campaign. Data supplied by Three UK, March 2022.