New report finds Shout is playing a key role in providing urgent mental health support across the UK

Today we are delighted to announce the launch of a new report ‘Help is just a text away: accessing and scaling mental health support through Shout’s digital service’ by our parent charity Mental Health Innovations and its partner the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.

The report reveals how Shout - as a text based service - is playing a key role in the provision of urgent and scalable digital mental health support across the UK, particularly during a time where there is unprecedented demand.

In this report, we worked with people who had experience of using the Shout text service to gauge their views alongside the anonymous data insights gleaned from more than 2.5 million text conversations. This Service User Voice Group of nine individuals provided us with the insight to understand the impact Shout has made to their lives, and help us look at where we can continue to make developments that improve peoples’ mental wellbeing.

Through our work with the Service User Voice Group we have been able to utilise key learnings and feedback to help continue to develop our suicide prevention work in collaboration with people with lived experience of mental health issues, and through our parent charity Mental Health Innovations, which powers Shout and The Mix - a range of online mental health support services for under-25s - we are strengthening our service offering for young people, gaining further insights and ensuring we can tailor our services further to meet young people’s needs.

Key findings in the report have revealed that:

• Shout is accessible. The report finds that the highest volume of Shout conversations take place between 6pm and 5am, at times when other traditional mental health services may not always be available. The analysis also shows that texters who have reached out to the service multiple times tend to text Shout during similar times of day/night, and this is especially the case for those who text during the night/early morning.
• Shout is equitable. Text-based services were considered by interviewees to offer an additional way in for people to help everyone access the support they need, particularly for young people, for people from stigmatised groups such as the LBGTQ+ community, or for people with specific access needs, such as being deaf or neurodivergent. Furthermore, people do not need sophisticated technology to reach out for support from Shout, making it particularly accessible as a service.
• Shout has reach. Shout has taken 2.5m conversations with 830,000 children, young people and adults who were struggling to cope. 83% of texters said that they found their conversation helpful, 66% of texters said they felt calmer, and 59% of texters said they could work out their problems better. Since the service began, Shout has developed more than 38,000 safety plans for people whose lives were at risk, and intervened with the support of emergency services on nearly 33,000 occasions.

We couldn’t do the work we do at Shout without our volunteers and the people who have been brave enough to reach out to the service. It is through their lived experiences, feedback and courage in opening up about their thoughts and feelings that we have been able to continue to develop the mental health support we are offering to people in crisis across the UK. Thank you to every single texter who has texted ‘Shout’ to 85258.

Find out how the Shout text support service is supporting people across the UK and read the full report.