But love seems to be missing in a lot of charities, especially mental health and suicide prevention charities
I have been through an odyssey of the NHS mental health service and came to the conclusion, they simply do NOT want to help people, especially those with trauma.
I heard an interview recently (Sep. 2025) by a mental health nurse Bella Jackson on Times Radio. She describes what she experienced on mental health wards, which in many examples I also experienced in ambulant mental health service. I can only encourage people to listen to the 22 minute interview.
.
.
When the NHS mental health service isn’t fit for purpose and mainly for a comfortable position for high ranking executives and psychiatrists and their nice pay-checks and pensions, you’d assume that mental health charities might be a better option. But it’s even worse there.
I wrote a post about the shocking and appalling way the suicide prevention charity Samaritans try to coerce mainly women to save strangers, men on train platforms. Upon further research I also came across “The Brenda Line” where female volunteers answered sex calls. And with the Samaritans, female volunteers are taught to bear with sex calls. This is also seen in some Trustpilot reviews, below.
The Samaritans run a sophisticated ad campaign called
where I collected the outcry of many people on social media, especially women.
I searched some more about other charities like Mind and CALM and fund that all 3 charities have over 80% and 90% DIS-approval rate, not only by callers, but by volunteers. And all this, the NHS mental health service, mental health charities that are supposed to help the most vulnerable are extremely toxic and money oriented.
Someone who used to work at Mind runs a blog similar to mine exposing systemic bullying within Mind’s workplace. I had a few brief interactions with Workplace Bullying Wales in 2018 when I started to call Pret’s bullying culture out publicly. I came across him as we both wrote under the Twitter hashtag # workplacebullying. He must have read part of my blog where I posted Glassdoor and Indeed reviews about Pret’s toxic culture. He then started using Glassdoor reviews about Mind as well. I love when blogs see the tools other blogs use to call out wrong doing and implement the same public tools at our disposal.
Searching on the Trustpilot reviews of the Samaritans, Mind and CALM, and my question on why these “charities” are so bad, I can only think one thing: Money!
Someone on social media put out some numbers on CEO pay etc. In this case with another suicide prevention charity CALM:
CALM CEO pay £154,000 (and that’s not even mentioning the bonus on top of that).
Advertising spent in 2023: £100,000 and received £150,000 in added value from media partners. Not to mention all the donations. And the people at the bottom manning the phones or walking the streets are UNPAID volunteers.
UK Prime Minister gets around £170,000 and U.S. President gets around $167,000., plus / minus These might have increased in 2025. But it is mind boggling how a charity CEO gets almost the same salary as the top leaders of countries.
Pret CEO Pano Christou gets around £500,000 plus over £5 million in bonus per year. These number rise every year. Pret is a private company. All also while Pano Christou cut staff wages and benefits. But a charity CEO is supposed to be in a non-profit organisation, but is on the same level as country leaders, PLUS the CEO gets bonus on top. Plus charities get donations and funding from tax payers. All for what?
All for what people describe as a disaster and shame of service? See below.
.
.
The current scoring as of October 2025 of the 3 main charities, I put the percentage of 1 and 2 star reviews combined:
Samaritans: 80% (1 & 2 stars) disapprove!
CALM: 92% disapprove! Actually CALM has a 100% disapproval rate, the one 3 star review talks about CALM potentially not being safe.
Mind: 93% disapprove!
WHAT IS GOING ON???!!
I found a review for Mind which I will link to that people should read, it gives a conspiracy or dystopian hint on how government services and charity services might work together and why all are so appalling. Tinfoil hat? Maybe, but the high negative scoring close to 100% disapproving is concerning. I haven’t even checked Google reviews yet!
.
.
.
.
.
.
Please click on the above links to each charity’s review page. I only want to put one revew here otherwise my blog post will get too long again.
The following review by an ex Samaritan volunteer gives a detail report on behind the scenes and how female volunteers are told to bear with sex callers instead of hanging up. It’s absolutely abusive,toxic, misogynistic and unacceptable.
I put the whole screenshot here and underneath the whole text. The review can be found via the link under the screenshot.
.
Link to review.
Full review text posted in Trustpilot in August 2025, please note, if there are spelling jistakes, I did not correct any to leave it in the author’s own words.
Quote:
“As an ex-volunteer, I do not recommend this toxic organisation
New volunteers expected to do all kinds of days and hours, and at least 3 hrs a week with at least 1 overnight shift every 3 months. This is incompatible with those who have children to care for and also work full time. Even those who don’t have kids and work full time have difficulty managing this. This skews the listener volunteer demographic to mainly middle class retirees with cars, own homes, few financial worries, out of touch/can’t relate with the current state of social services, government agencies and working class people problems. They do this for an ego boost, only work hours that are comfortable for them, leaving unsocial hours to new or a few very committed volunteers.
Majority of callers are lonely older people who don’t work and aren’t close to their families for various reasons; lonely people who have difficulties socialising for various reasons; angry people shouting down the phone being belligerent/sarcastic about the volunteer’s inability to solve their money/housing/job/relationship problems for them. Female volunteers get a lot of male sex pests calling up to masturbate to fantasies about sex involving rape and children. A lot of prisoners call as well and when they encounter female listeners, a large proportion of them want to talk about sex. Female volunteers are encouraged to “explore feelings” with these men because they must have been “traumatised” to act this way. Samaritans callers are now routed nationally across UK and Ireland so get a fair few callers with thick accents that are very challenging to make sense of, making it difficult to understand/converse/”help” them. Very rarely are there truly suicide calls, but many bored/lonely regular callers will claim to be suicidal to keep the volunteer on the line.
Deteriorating NHS services mean that more callers with serious mental health issues are redirected to Samaritans whenever NHS mental services are closed/overwhelmed. Many callers are in the midst of a serious mental health crisis – upset/angry, psychotic, incoherent callers blaming the world for their ills, threatening to do something violent to whomever is living with them to “fix” their issues. Samaritans can do nothing unless caller gives address+name, which never happens as callers are often paranoid about police/doctors.
The in-house training is 6 weeks of group classes using standardised teaching material from Samaritans HQ which teaches the “listening wheel” and the stepped approach to discussing suicide with callers. After group class training, training is then conducted 1:1 by so-called “mentors” – mostly old-timers in the branch who listen in on conversations new volunteers take, telling them what to say. Caller numbers are auto-logged by HQ. Any personal details given by callers are stored in HQ servers too. Zero consistency in how mentors teach because they were trained ages ago, answering phones in their own way. It’s all very vague – basically if a trainee gells well with their mentor and don’t question the flaws in the system, then he/she will be approved as a volunteer. There are branch politics/unspoken hierarchy/cliques – everyone keeps quiet about bullying/makes snide remarks – the only solution is for the person picked on to resign. Some volunteers seem to weirdly derive pleasure when sharing callers’ sexual/relationship problems to other volunteers (and whomever).
It’s all very superficial. Samaritans are taught to never give advice; never disclose anything, i.e. never agree with the caller on any opinion/preference, even if they did. While old-timers get away with saying what they like, new Samaritans are chastised if conversations aren’t focused only on caller’s “feelings” – no “chatting” with callers about anything else – must allow more silences so “callers can talk more”. All this can result in a cold, unempathic, unnatural conversation style. Few people who aren’t trained counsellors can talk like this without sounding stunted and unemotional. Doesn’t suit callers who aren’t “talkers”, and not effective either for callers in acute states of psychosis wanting to do something violent, which are all typical calls that Samaritans get. The Samaritans approach uses aspects of Carl Roger’s Person-Centred therapy but can’t build long term relationships with callers to help them improve/change their lives. The irony is they want unpaid volunteers. If they’ll only hire and pay trained counsellors, the service quality could be improved.
Campaign for a better NHS, social services, government, etc. that make a difference. Not this. This is a vain attempt to show donors they’re doing “something”. Every Conservative’s wet dream is to defund public services and direct everyone affected to the Samaritans.”
End of quote.
Something needs to change! I pray that undercover journalists infiltrate these charities and bring to light what’s gong on. Journalists are often THE ONLY chance to expose these organisations and start change, just like a TV drama about the Post Office Scandal brought it to light and political debate, even though many victims still wait for justice and compensation.
I also have a huge issue with food charities who sell food for very low price to the public which helps a great deal, have volunteers work for free, but the volunteers must also pay for their food shop. Full price.
What the heck is going on?!
Please do NOT give any money to charities unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure their work truly has impact and the volunteers are treated well. Rather seek out people in your immediate neighbourhood and support them individually.
Something needs to happen about these CEO salaries and bonuses. It’s unethical and perverse!
.
.
I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. Schlee has been appointed CEO of itsu in 2024 by Julian Metcalfe who gave him the CEO spot at Pret many years ago.
I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret and What shop MANAGERS & HQ staff say about Pret incl. CEO Pano Christou.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review as well as mentioned by the BBC.
Please also see the MEDIA page for more on my work with the press.
NEW LinkTree
.
Thank you for reading/listening.
©2017 – Present: expret.org
Interview:
(Please be aware that the player shows 0:00 but just press play)
.
.
Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
©2017 – Present: expret.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.
Bullied during bereavement in Pret A Manger 