Crisis Lines by Country

United States

United Kingdom

Ireland

Canada

Australia

New Zealand

Europe

112 is the emergency number in every EU country, free from any phone, including a locked one. The crisis lines below are national; the same three-digit numbers do not work everywhere, so check the row for your country.

Anywhere else

findahelpline.com is a free directory of verified crisis lines in more than 175 countries, by phone, text and chat, run as a public service by ThroughLine. If your country is not on this page, start there. Failing that, search “[your country] crisis line” and choose the result run by a health service or a named charity, not an advertiser.

What happens when you call

1. A trained person answers. On most lines it is a volunteer or counselor whose whole job is this call. There is no script you have to follow and no wrong way to start. “I don’t know why I’m calling” is a normal first sentence.
2. They will ask what is going on, and they will listen. They may ask directly whether you are thinking about suicide. The question is routine and it is safe to answer honestly; it does not trigger anything on its own.
3. They will ask whether you are safe right now. If you are not, they will help you get safe, which may mean staying on the line while you move away from something, or agreeing on what you will do in the next hour.
4. They will not lecture, diagnose, or tell your family. Calls are confidential. The one limit, on every line, is that if a life is in immediate danger they may involve emergency services; the lines say so openly, and Trans Lifeline is the one above that does not do this without your consent.
5. You can hang up whenever you want. You can call back. You can call a different line if the first one did not fit.
6. Most calls end with a plan for the next day or two, not a cure. That is what they are for: getting through the next stretch, and pointing you to what comes after. For what comes after, see When to Seek Help.

If you are calling about someone else

Every line above will talk to you if you are worried about another person. Tell them what you have seen, what the person has said, and whether they are with you. They will help you decide what to do in the next hour, what to say, and when it is time to call the emergency number instead. The Relationship Emergency Reference has the signs to look for; Volume 2, Appendix B has the longer guide.

When the phone is the problem

If you cannot speak, cannot be overheard, or cannot bear a voice today, every country above has a text or chat line: 741741 and 988 by text in the US, 85258 in the UK, 50808 in Ireland, 988 and 686868 in Canada, 0477 13 11 14 in Australia, 1737 in New Zealand, and the web chats at 113.nl, 024 and telefonseelsorge.de in Europe. A text conversation counts. It is not the lesser option.

Every number on this page was checked against the operating organization’s own website on 10 September 2026. Hours are local time. Where a service has changed since the books went to print, the change is listed at the foot of the page.