My cat and suicide prevention

Some thoughts, late at night (and when did I become such a night owl? I used to be in bed by 9:00 p.m., and up at 5:30). I'm re-reading a novel by Monica Dickens called The Listeners, a fictionalized account of the Samaritans, the first suicide prevention group which was started in the UK in the 1950s. As with a lot of books you first read a long time ago, the book has mysteriously changed. 

I have my own personal experiences with the Samaritans, and I can tell you how THEY have changed in the past 15 years or so. It's sad, to me, that it has become so corporate, with their web site so slickly generic it could be a site for any modern business. I suppose this has been done to make it appeal to the public by looking so contemporary. It even posts charts with the rate of suicides in Britain over the years, boasting that it's at a "six-year low", with a gloating sense that THEY are somehow responsible. 

Charts and graphs don't help people who are desperate and, as the Monica Dickens book puts it, "at the end of their tether". If I saw a graph like that, I'd immediately try to find something more human. It's not the warm, engaging site I read when I needed help so badly. How many people will NOT be helped because of it?