Calls to Samaritans soar 30% in past year

Calls to the Samaritans have jumped by 30% in the last year — as more and more people in distress contact the charity.

The figure is contained in the charity’s 2014-2015 impact report which reveals that Samaritans branches across the country responded to 623,579 calls to its free helpline, 13,272 emails and 7,705 texts in the 12-month period from October 2014 to September 2015.

The charity credits the increase to the introduction of a free-to-call helpline in March 2014. Its volunteers have answered one million phone calls since then.