18 people die by suicide every day in England and Wales, but help is out there.
There’s always someone to listen.
Mind
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Shout
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Samaritans
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YoungMinds
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CALM
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Papyrus
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Kooth: Mental Health Support for Young People
What is Kooth?
Kooth is a free, safe, anonymous online emotional wellbeing community that is accessible 24/7, 365 days of the year and provides access to chat sessions with BACP-accredited counsellors and qualified emotional wellbeing practitioners.
All our chat sessions are text-based conversations that take place on the Kooth website, and last up to an hour. Chat is available from 12pm – 10pm Monday through Friday, and 6pm – 10pm Saturday and Sunday, providing a much needed ‘out of hours’ service.
Kooth is accessible from any device that connects to wifi, allowing young people to seek support at a time and location that is suitable for them.
FAQs
Are you able to see all content on the site?
There are restrictions in place to ensure that when using Kooth, you only see what is age appropriate for you. This also helps us to ensure you find the content that is most useful to you.
Any comments are pre-moderated to ensure that only relevant comments are posted and visible.
Can you create content on Kooth?
You can submit content and post on the discussion boards to share your experiences and to support others within the Kooth community.
We also encourage you to give us feedback by sharing your views of how we deliver our service.
This will help us to keep improving Kooth.
Can you message other young people on Kooth?
The safety of our users on Kooth is really important to us.
Therefore, you cannot add friends or directly message other young people on the site in the same way you can on gaming platforms or social media sites.
This is because we are an anonymous service and we need to make sure everyone using the site is safe.
When can you talk to someone?
The Kooth team are available to chat 7 days a week, 365* days of the year. You can access the magazine, discussion boards and any other online content whenever you like, from wherever you are.
Our friendly online team are available to chat during the following times:
- From 12 noon until 10pm weekdays.
- From 6pm until 10pm weekends.
To make sure we can support as many of you as possible, we do have a chat queue.
How long you will have to wait in the chat queue depends on how busy the site is so please be patient with us.
You can send a message to the team at any time and it will be responded to during service working hours. Our counsellors are employed by us and are fully qualified with the BACP or equivalent.
*We offer a reduced service on bank holidays
Do you need to be referred by a GP?
You do not need to be referred to Kooth to access the service.
You are invited and welcome to join as long as you fall within the age range that is available to your area.
Mental Health Matters – The NHS is here to help
Feelings of anxiety and depression can affect us all. If you need help with your mental health, you can refer yourself, or your GP can refer you.
Let us help you get your feet back on the ground.
Go to nhs.uk/help
Male Menopause and Mental Health
For some older men, the onset of male menopause can be a difficult time, with different symptoms beginning to affect their well-being, male menopause can have an even bigger impact on their mental health.
What is the male menopause?
“Male menopause” is commonly used as a title because it affects men as they age and has similar symptoms to the female menopause. But is it the same?
In truth, not quite – the term is something of a misleading tagline – while there is a very real change which happens to some men at a certain point in their life, the name itself encompasses a lot of different conditions.The one key link between them all? A large dip in that all-important testosterone.
Some of the most common include:
- Testosterone deficiency
- Increasing SHBG levels
- Reduced pituitary function
- Reduced production of testosterone by the testicles
- Increasing insulin resistance/onset of diabetes
In all of these cases, it’s the dramatic reduction in the amount of testosterone the body produces which causes the menopause to kick in.
While these factors won’t affect everyone as they age, it can have a huge impact on individuals who do see a dip in production.