BECOME A VOLUNTEER
Giving your time to others is invaluable. Samaritans volunteer Diogo Duarte tells us how their helpline can save lives
Volunteering for the Samaritans always seemed like an obvious choice for Diogo Duarte. “If you’re not scared to talk about death and selfharm and have difficult conversations, you can make a real difference,” says the 30-year-old, who lives in Clapham and volunteers at the central London branch. He tells us he’s always been fascinated by human psychology, but it’s also his love of metal that helped him address those often tricky topics.
“I’ve been a metal fan since
I was 14 years old,” he says. “Having been a goth as a teenager, these issues about mental health and suicide never frightened me. Talk of self-harm, suicidal ideation and depression wasn’t unheard of in my close group of friends. It was a really supportive community because it was so easy to talk about those things.”
Diogo has worked in mental healthrelated roles since 2010, and joined the Samaritans as a Service Improvement Officer, working on their suicide prevention and support programme for schools and colleges, last year. He volunteers on their helplines outside of his staff role.
“We’re there to allow people to reach out and talk and be themselves,” he explains. “They can talk about how they’re feeling without having someone on the other end telling them that they must feel differently. Sometimes, being listened to in a nonjudgemental way will make someone feel better, sometimes it won’t. But it’s not our role to fix it or get them out of that state. It’s a nice side effect if it happens, but our objective is more passive about that, because telling someone they’ve got a million reasons to be happy when they’re depressed isn’t helpful.”
Samaritans require all volunteers to undergo a training course of several weeks (the length varies between branches) involving a few hours each week. “It’s very role-play heavy, which used to scare the shit out of me!” laughs Diogo. “I absolutely felt at the end that I was equipped to deal with it. When you pick up the phone or open an email you still have no idea what you’re going to get.”
Volunteering can be difficult. “It’s challenging when you hear someone is struggling really badly to the point of taking their own life. When you put the phone down, you don’t know what happens next,” says Diogo. But there are uplifting moments, too. “It’s rewarding when people say thank you and that you’ve made a real difference. That’s when it really hits you why you’re doing it.”
As for why musicians and music fans might be particularly at risk of mental health issues, Diogo is pensive. “If you’re talking about musicians, there’s something to be said about the lifestyle – lack of sleep, drugs, the lack of structure and not knowing where the money’s going to come from, that’s a stressful lifestyle,” he muses. “The mainstream media has [accused metal
“You can Make a real difference”
DIOGO SAYS SAMARITANS ARE ALWAYS IN NEED OF NEW VOLUNTEERS
of] encouraging those emotions, but I’m not sure that ever mattered to me, because it enabled me not to feel alone and to talk to my peers.”
Samaritans is already active within the metal community, and have a stand at Bloodstock festival that’s open 24 hours a day for anyone to drop in and talk to a volunteer.
Being able to talk openly about mental health is by far the most important aspect for Diogo. “You can learn that it isn’t this bogeyman and it is easy to talk about. We’re in desperate need of more volunteers; we put the phone down and the phone rings again. Sometimes a volunteer is the only thing that stops someone from taking their own life,” he says. BECOMING A VOLUNTEER IS AS EASY AS CONTACTING YOUR LOCAL BRANCH OF SAMARITANS AND BEING ABLE TO GIVE THREE HOURS PER WEEK AND ONE NIGHTSHIFT
PER MONTH. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW. SAMARITANS.ORG/VOLUNTEER-US