Getting help now
Where to go in the UK if you need mental health help urgently: NHS 111 option 2 in England, Breathing Space in Scotland, and the national routes in Wales and Northern Ireland.
If there is an immediate risk to life, call 999 or go to A&E. That is the answer, and it is not an overreaction.
This page is not a crisis service and neither is the rest of this site. It is a short list of the official routes, so that you do not have to search for them while you are struggling.
England
NHS 111, then press option 2. Since 2024, NHS 111 has offered urgent mental health support, 24 hours a day, every day, staffed by trained mental health professionals. It is free, and you can call for yourself or for someone else.
Local NHS trusts also run their own urgent mental health helplines. The NHS publishes a page listing where to get urgent help, including how to find your local crisis line.
Scotland
Breathing Space — free and confidential, for anyone in Scotland feeling low, anxious or distressed. NHS inform publishes its number and opening hours, and the service runs a telephone line, a web contact route and a British Sign Language interface.
NHS 24 also provides mental health support out of hours.
Wales
The Welsh Government publishes guidance on choosing the right NHS service, including where urgent mental health support sits. For non-urgent online support without a GP referral, see therapy across the UK.
Northern Ireland
nidirect, the official government information service, publishes a page specifically for a mental health emergency — what to do if you are in crisis or despair, including the crisis helpline available across Northern Ireland, and how to reach urgent services out of hours.
While you are waiting
If you are already in an NHS service and things get worse, tell them. Waiting lists are managed on the information the service has; if that information is out of date, so is your place on it.
If you are seeing someone privately and you are not safe, that is a reason to contact your GP or an urgent service as well, not instead. Private therapy is not an emergency service either.
This site does not provide counselling, does not respond to disclosures, and is not monitored for crisis contact. The routes above are staffed; this site is not.