Luke Ogden, helplines manager from mental health helpline CALL, says the number of contacts they received more than doubled from January 2020 to January 2021, reaching 4104 in one month, the most they’re ever received in the 25 years they’ve been around. 

 

CALL is a 24-hour mental health helpline based in North Wales offering emotional support, advice and a confidential ear for those who are struggling. They helpline started in 1996 and is funded by the Welsh Government. CALL can be contacted by phone, text, on social media or on their website which offers a self assessment tool, general advice on a number of different topics and links to other agencies that may be able to provide better and more specific help depending on what issues people contact them about.

 

Luke shared that the biggest worries people getting in contact with them have are anxiety, depression, stress and isolation. They advise people to focus on the ‘health triangle’ - physical, social and mental. 

 

“The social aspect is the most difficult at the moment with social distancing and isolation but focusing on the other two and using social media to keep in contact with loved ones to keep some aspect of the social side really helps,” he said.

 

“We’ve noticed that callers mostly want someone to talk to during this, maybe they live alone or maybe they can’t talk to people close to them so picking up the phone or sending us a text allows them to talk anonymously to someone. It’s like the saying; a problem shared is a problem halved, that's why we’re here.”

 

Luke also mentioned that a lot of the calls they receive are from people who have been told to shield because of an underlying health condition or age. This means those people haven’t been advised to go out at all for most of the pandemic because of the heightened risk to them. Luke thinks the shielding has added to the feeling of loneliness because having contact with anyone is a heightened risk to them so most have been completely alone and are just looking for someone to talk to.

 

Out of hours mental health line Solidarity in a Crisis (SIAC), based in London, saw calls soar by 171 percent in the period between March and August of 2020. 

 

SIAC said: “Most of the calls are about the consequence of the lockdown rather than fear of the virus itself. Isolation is the biggest challenge and it is causing a great deal of anxiety.” 

 

Isolation has been a huge issue throughout the pandemic as people have never been told to stay away from others to this extent before, this change along with the rest of the pandemic’s uncertainty and fear has contributed to the rise in calls to helplines.

 

Samaritans says: “We’ve received 10% more contacts about

loneliness during this period than the same time last year.” In

Wales alone Samaritans responded to 147,000 calls for help

between April 2019 and March 2020.

 

SIAC data also shows that the biggest increase from callers

have been young people and men. These groups have the

highest rise in calls across many different helplines including

Mind, Samaritans and CALL. 

 

Middle aged men have had the highest suicide rates for many

years. According to Samaritans men have the highest suicide

rate in the UK. In England the highest rate is among men aged 45-49 and in Wales the highest rate is among men aged 40-44 - data from Samaritans Suicide Statistics Report 2019.      

 

“I called Samaritans (at Christmas) because I felt hopeless, it was like there was no way I’d ever get back to my life and it would always be this isolation and loneliness, it was a real low point for me...”

 

Stephen, aged 61 from Newbridge, called Samaritans and Mind during lockdown. 

Stephen lost his job as a health and safety instructor at the beginning of the pandemic and has been stuck in the house ever since. He lives alone which he used to enjoy but he says now it’s the worst place to be. 

 

With his daughter, her partner and his grandson living only a few streets away he was able to form a support bubble with them as a single person. He says: “I've formed a support bubble with my daughter but it’s not the same, being on my own through this has made me start hating my own company.

 

“I first called Mind after seeing a FaceBook post that said they’re available just to chat, I always thought they were meant to be called in a crisis only and feeling lonely wasn’t an emergency. I called anyway and spoke with a lovely lady who listened to me talk about it all. It helped clear my mind and I felt a lot better after calling. 

 

After calling for the first time in April and getting a slightly new perspective on things after speaking with Samaritans Stephen felt a lot better doing into the summer months. Better weather and less restrictions meant he was able to see his family and make the most of the weather. He didn’t call again until December.

 

“The Christmas restrictions were hard on me because I was looking forward to it all year, I thought I could end the year with my family and have some kind of normal life going into the new year. 

 

“I called Samaritans then because I felt hopeless, it was like there was no way I’d ever get back to my life and it would always be this isolation and loneliness, it was a real low point for me. 

 

He said: “The woman I spoke to gave me some perspective on it, it made me realise how important it really is to talk about these things and how much of a difference the people on the other end of a helpline make.”

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The story has been very similar for millions of people during the pandemic as more than 1.72 million people were unemployed as of November 2020.

 

The UK Government is spending £280bn on measures to fight Covid-19 and its impact on the economy, including £73bn for measures to support jobs such as the furlough scheme, which pays some of the wages of employees who cannot work because of the pandemic. 

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The Office for Budget Responsibility expects 2.2 million people to be unemployed at the end of the year, or 6.5% of all workers, but the number of unemployed is expected to fall next year as the economy recovers from the crisis. 

 

The government’s furlough scheme has been able to help and many businesses have been able to keep their staff on furlough instead of making them redundant. This has helped to reduce the number of people being made redundant and becoming unemployed. The furlough scheme has protected more than 11m jobs since the pandemic began, and 4.7m workers were on furlough in January.

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“Living alone during lockdown is the loneliest I’ve ever felt...”

 

Ash, aged 27, is a second year student in Cardiff and lives alone after moving from

her hometown near Bristol. She has been in Cardiff since September 2019 for

university where she studies architecture. 

 

She said: “When I first heard about the lockdown I was excited, I thought I’d have

two weeks off uni and could catch up on my work and make time for myself. After it

got extended the first time my stomach dropped because I knew I’d be stuck here. 

 

“Living alone during lockdown is the loneliest I’ve ever felt because I was constantly

stuck with my own company, it gets hard separating the thoughts in your own head

and real life sometimes.” 

 

At the beginning she was going for daily walks as allowed under lockdown restrictions and going shopping once a week.

 

She said: “I loved my walks at the start, it was a challenge for me to go on different routes each time and see things I hadn’t before, but I started to think ‘what's the point?’ The only time I had contact with people was if i passed someone on a walk or when I was in the supermarket, that’s no way to live. 

 

“I would Facetime my family as much as I could but when we hung up it reminded me of how long since I saw them in person and how long it would be until I could again. 

 

“I called Samaritans because I felt the loneliness taking over, I didn’t recognise myself anymore. I lost all motivation and creativity and nothing was making me happy. 

 

“Just having someone who didn’t know me and who wouldn’t judge me made a world of difference. They helped me get a new perspective on my life and that despite thinking I couldn’t, they told me I would feel like me again if I keep going.”