Guides
The hard part is rarely the hour of the crisis. It is the weeks around it — when nobody has told you what happens next, what you are entitled to, or what any of it is going to feel like. These are for that.
What happens when you call 988
Who answers, how the call is routed, what they ask, and whether the police get sent.
5 minIn a crisisGetting help
Going to the ER in a mental health crisis
What actually happens, why the wait can run into days, and the federal law that means they have to see you.
5 minIn a crisisTreatment and services
Will I be committed if I tell someone?
What an involuntary hold actually requires, why it varies by state, and what happens in nearly every other case.
5 minGetting helpTreatment and services
What it costs, and what to do if you can't pay
What is free, what your insurance owes you, the safety net if you have none, and how to deal with a bill that has already arrived.
5 minGetting helpTreatment and services
What actually happens when you call a crisis line
Who answers, what they ask, whether they can trace you, and what happens if you say nothing at all.
6 minIn a crisisGetting help
Will I be sectioned if I tell someone?
What detention under the Mental Health Act actually requires, how rare it is, and what usually happens instead.
5 minGetting helpTreatment and services
How to get through tonight
Not a plan for your life. A plan for the next few hours, written for someone who cannot manage anything bigger.
5 minIn a crisis
The first 72 hours after a hospital stay
The highest-risk period in the whole literature, and almost nobody prepares you for it. What to arrange before you leave.
5 minAfter a crisisTreatment and services
Getting a first GP appointment you can't face
The phone call is the barrier, not the appointment. Ways around it, and exactly what to say once you are through.
6 minGetting helpTreatment and services
Surviving a long waiting list
What to do with the months between a referral and a first appointment — the gap where most people are quietly left alone.
6 minGetting helpTreatment and servicesLiving with it
What a mental health assessment is actually like
Who is in the room, what they ask, how long it takes, and what they are deciding. Written to remove the unknown.
6 minTreatment and servicesGetting help
Going to A&E in a mental health crisis
When it is the right call, what the wait is really like, what to take with you, and how to be heard once you are there.
6 minIn a crisisTreatment and services
Telling your employer about your mental health
What you are and are not obliged to say, who is allowed to know, and wording that gets you what you need without a diagnosis.
6 minMoney, work and housingLiving with it
Relapse: why getting worse again isn't starting over
The most demoralising part of recovery is the second bad patch. It is also the most misread.
6 minLiving with itAfter a crisis
Money, debt and mental health
Debt and despair feed each other, and the loop is breakable at the money end even when it is not breakable at the other.
6 minMoney, work and housingLiving with it
What to expect from antidepressants
The first fortnight, how long they really take, what the side effects are like, and why you must not stop abruptly.
6 minTreatment and servicesLiving with it
Alcohol and low mood
Why the thing that reliably helps in the evening reliably makes the next three days worse.
5 minSleep and bodyLiving with it
Sleep and low mood
Sleep is not a side issue. It is one of the few levers that moves mood in both directions, and it is the one you have most control over.
6 minSleep and bodyLiving with it
When someone refuses help
What you can and cannot do when the person you are worried about will not see anyone — and how to stay useful anyway.
6 minSupporting someone
Anniversaries and difficult dates
The dates you can see coming are the ones you can plan for. A short method for doing that.
6 minBereavementLiving with it
Telling your family
Who to tell, how much, and what to do when the person you most need to tell is the one least able to hear it.
6 minGetting helpLiving with it
Going back to work after time off
Phased return, what your employer must consider, and the first-day questions nobody prepares you for.
6 minMoney, work and housingAfter a crisisLiving with it
Supporting someone from a distance
You are in another country, another city, or on the other end of a phone. What still works, and what to do when you cannot get there.
6 minSupporting someoneIn a crisis
Being discharged from mental health services
Discharge often arrives before you feel ready. What it should involve, what to ask for, and how to get back in.
6 minTreatment and servicesAfter a crisis
Drugs, alcohol and feeling suicidal
What to do when mental health services want you sober first, substance services don't handle crisis, and A&E treats you differently while you're intoxicated.
6 minIn a crisisTreatment and services
Crisis support when you're autistic
Phone lines are the default crisis route and don't work for a lot of autistic people. Text and chat routes, and what gets misread as not being distressed enough.
5 minIn a crisisGetting help
When a crisis service isn't accessible
For Deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind and partially sighted people, and anyone a phone line doesn't serve. BSL, text relay, textphone and easy read.
5 minIn a crisisGetting help
When your job is the emergency
For first responders and emergency-services staff: cumulative exposure, why disclosure feels costly, fitness-for-duty fears, and what confidentiality covers.
6 minMoney, work and housingLiving with it
Perinatal mental health and intrusive thoughts
The fear that stops people telling a midwife or GP about intrusive thoughts, and the clinical distinction that means disclosure usually brings support, not removal.
6 minGetting helpTreatment and services
Self-harm, and trying to stop
For anyone currently hurting themselves or trying to build space between the urge and the act. Distinct from wanting to die, and not a character flaw.
6 minIn a crisisLiving with it
When someone you love is self-harming
What to do and say in the first few days after finding out, why it doesn't automatically mean what you're most afraid of, and how to stay useful without watching constantly.
5 minSupporting someoneIn a crisis
When your child is in a harmful online community
What these communities actually do to a person, why the instinctive response usually backfires, and what to do tonight.
6 minSupporting someoneIn a crisis
Reporting harmful content online
Where to actually report content that encourages suicide or self-harm in the UK, and an honest account of how well it works.
4 minGetting helpSupporting someone
When a harmful community feels like home
For anyone who has been spending time in an online space that encourages dying. What it gives you, what it costs, and why leaving feels like abandoning friends.
4 minIn a crisisLiving with it
When you are the one who is meant to cope
For doctors, nurses, paramedics and care staff: why knowing the pathway is no protection, what the fear of disclosure is really about, and how to be treated somewhere you do not work.
6 minGetting helpMoney, work and housing
Getting crisis support when you cannot see the screen
Crisis support moved to chat and apps, and that is usually called an accessibility win. With a screen reader it often is not — what tends to work instead, and what to ask for.
6 minGetting helpIn a crisis
When caring for someone is costing you everything
Everything around an unpaid carer is organised around the person they care for. This is about the carer as the person in trouble, including the thoughts nobody asks about.
6 minSupporting someoneLiving with it
When the pain is not going to stop
Suicidal thinking that comes out of unrelenting pain gets treated as either purely psychiatric or purely rational. It is usually neither, and services tend to answer only one half.
6 minLiving with itTreatment and services
The first year after a birth, when it goes wrong
Every appointment that year is nominally about the baby. What to do when you are the one who is not coping, including how to correct a screening answer you got wrong on purpose.
6 minGetting helpLiving with it
When gambling has taken more than money
The hiding is usually what does the damage, not the sum. Why this turns dark, why the size of the debt is not the point, and what to do in what order.
6 minLiving with itMoney, work and housing
When someone else's gambling is wrecking your life
For the partner, parent or adult child. Being liable for decisions you did not make, why the shame transfers, and why your own crisis is not secondary to theirs.
6 minSupporting someoneMoney, work and housing
Getting help when you work on site
Appointments are weekday daytime and you are on site at seven. The barriers are practical before they are anything else, and there are routes that fit the job.
6 minGetting helpMoney, work and housing
When the work dries up
No redundancy, no notice, no process — a contract just ends. For self-employed and site work, where the arithmetic can look closed and working is the one tool you cannot use.
6 minMoney, work and housingLiving with it
Worried about someone on your crew
You are not his GP and do not need to be. What noticing looks like here, where the conversation can actually happen, and the words to use.
6 minSupporting someoneIn a crisis
Elsewhere on this site
How these are written
Every guide is checked against the same build gates as the rest of the site, and every page carries the date it was last reviewed. Nothing goes up as a placeholder — an empty page that ranks in search and then disappoints someone in trouble is worse than not existing.