Sexist and dangerous Samaritans ad

[Meadowbird]

https://twitter.com/samaritans/status/1760599123923722266

A really bizarre ad - encouraging lone women to approach disturbed men on deserted train station platforms and ask them out for a coffee. What could possibly go wrong? They also will become sexier if they do apparently.

This campaign is dangerous

• Hot Coffee Mod of Grand Theft Auto
• Gloria inviting Andy up for coffee that he doesn't drink and she doesn't have in Brassed Off.

You are actually demonstrating my point here: coffee is widely but not universally understood to refer to sex in British society, meaning that a woman not in the know is at risk of being misunderstood by a man who is.

Deliberately don’t look at grand theft auto, because its horrible. Haven’t seen Brassed Off. clearly, a philistine.

I have no idea what sex and coffee have to do with each other, apart from the very old “coming in for a coffee line”. Which is not what the woman in the ad says at all. Hell of a stretch to suggest anyone would think she is.

Zero Suicide Alliance online training presentation. You don't start the conversation with that but they emphasise that you need to be confident using that word during the conversation and not euphemise with terms like "doing something silly".

The pic is of one of the screens.

It can be interpreted as an invitation for a date.

You can take it at https://www.zerosuicidealliance.com/suicide-awareness-training without needing a login account for my work training portal.

I think so too. And people do this kind of thing anyway without stopping to think. My friend was crossing the big bridge over the river late at night and came across a young man standing on the parapet. His eyes were shut tight, he kept crossing himself,and at the same time he was shuffling tiny steps towards the edge.

She hurried over, quiet as she could, and then just said could she help him somehow and he got impatient because she had broken his concentration...
She kept talking about trivia and gradually he was drawn into a conversation. An hour later he got down on to the bridge and walked off with a wee wave to her.
I reckon she saved his life.

I don’t think bridges are a good example at the moment where we have had a v high profile incident of a man jumping off one after he had just thrown acid at a woman and two girls. No one knew this at the time as it hadn’t made the news. Thank goodness no young naive woman approached him trying to help!

It’s just of all the opening lines you could use to a man who doesn’t look very stable asking about coffee seems like a dumb choice from the ad agency. It’s just a word that could easily be misconstrued by someone not thinking straight.

Good point. It’s really quite a minefield. We’ve had a number of suicides at my local station over the years and I have often thought about what I’d do if I saw someone who looked like they were thinking about it, and my instinctive thought has always been to go and tell the staff, it has never been ‘I’ll go and talk to him myself’.

The staff member is stood still. Not approaching.

Have to ask, if almost everyone on this thread can see the issues, maybe they are right.

FWIW there is no way in hell I would approach any man who looked thunderous in any place, but definitely not near a train track with a train due soon. And the coffee thing is just ridiculous.

I didn't mean the Nescafé ad was related to Princess Diana, but coffee and flirting goes back a long way.

Just showed my partner the ad and he saw her approach as an invitation for them both to have coffee, despite that not being her actual words.

Would the people behind this advert also be advocating for a non-medically trained person to go and administer first aid to someone who had fallen, or passed out?

Why are they perpetuating the message that anyone severely depressed can snap out of it with a little chat?

It's a nice, bright day too, how convenient it's not dark. Should the nice lady also be primed and ready to assess a situation at night and approach a man then too?

And totally yes to the stylishly-dressed version lady being free of troubles vs the dowdy one, burdened by life. She's only adding to her downtrodden glumness by being too lazy to step in to the mental health crisis of a stranger.

Same I showed it to my DP (not in a "well my DP who is king says ... " way, more in a hes clueless and can never seem to see subtle meanings in things, ever, way)

His response was "I hope you never approach a weird guy asking where to go for a coffee he'll think youre flirting, when you can just Google the nearest one on your phone".

Quite insightful for a man who wouldn't normally know a hint if it flew over in sky writing.

Why are they perpetuating the message that anyone severely depressed can snap out of it with a little chat?

I don't think they're saying that, just sometimes if you're spiralling, your mind's all over the place or in a dark place, someone speaking about something mundane or trivial can pull you out and "ground" you momentarily, bring you back to the present.
Grounding - look up what it is if you're not sure (meant genuinely, not patronisingly, as sometimes many people haven't heard of it.

The thing is that any social overture with a stranger is wide open to misinterpretation and sometimes wilful misinterpretation, especially by a man with poor boundaries. I haven't seen the ad but but just looking at the picture I identify myself with the badly dressed uptight lady.

I'm not messing with an unknown bloke in an unpredictable mental state. The chances that talking him is going to get me in to trouble are higher than the chances that he is suicidal. In fact he could be suicidal and that question could still get me in trouble if he decides that I'm the one to rescue him.

I travel on public transport a lot and I keep myself to myself. Good to get the suggestion to speak to a member of staff if I have a real concern about someone. Maybe a campaign to make sure stations are staffed would be more useful against suicide than advertising for passengers to put ourselves at risk.

If a stranger of the opposite sex asked me where to get a coffee, I’d assume it was a come on. Depending on the circumstances, I might think the same if it were another woman too.

Adding my strong support to the Zero suicide alliance free online training mentioned by other posters upthread. It takes about 20 minutes to click through their presentation and I have had cause to use it three times now - I'm fairly sure that at least one of those times the person would have gone through with it and killed herself if nobody had have had a chat. If you've got time to scroll mumsnet for a bit, please just this one time go browse the free training over at ZSA instead. You honestly never know when you might save a life.

https://zsa.frank-cdn.uk/scorm/full-training/story.html

And yes, depicting a black woman having to overcome her own mind (concerns, gut instinct) to approach and service/ save an agitated white man isn't without multiple glaring problems. For me the problem with the make up wasn't that "you too can be sexier if you do this" but that a woman without make up is portrayed as less confident. Enough of that BS already.

Norwich football club handled the whole thing better.

(But seriously, go do the ZSA online training now, before you scroll and more of mumsnet. Please. https://zsa.frank-cdn.uk/scorm/full-training/story.html)

I have watched that training. There's some useful things there, particularly in relation to interactions with family and friends but I still think that exhorting random strangers to take the risk of approaching a stranger without fully considering the risks to them is not right.

I am not surprised suicide is increasing - but there are so many things which are broken in society, and the chances that any given random stranger has the mental wellbeing and resilience to intervene I think must be at an all time low. And as a random stranger you have no ability to intervene in the factors making someone suicidal - e.g. no money, lack of support for caring responsibilities, broken healthcare / social care etc Yes you can disrupt their train of thought right then but there is a high risk to you - it is quite likely an agitated man may take his anger out on you.

And encouraging single women to approach strange men is just flat wrong.

Good point about the man who jumped off a bridge after seriously harming a women and girls too.

I also think there's a contradiction in the statistics in the training and the message about intervention. There's been a huge increase in suicide risk for under 30 women - well part of that is male hatred of / violence against women and the toxic pornographic environment young women have to navigate.

Given that statistic - where's the care for young women (facing a huge increase in suicide risk) in the Samaritans ad?

Lots of women suffer from stalkers / creepy male behaviour and the police rarely do anything - remember they didn't even investigate Couzens for flashing despite lots of evidence provided by McDonalds staff - and this behaviour can make someone suicidal. Why would you invite a man with clear mental health problems into your life? Insane.

The fact that there are so many other people there makes it even more absurd that they're suggesting that it's this woman's duty to save a man who seems to be having a mental health crisis. Why should she take risks to help a stranger who might behave unpredictably?

Having watched the longer video there are quite a few other people there, including the station worker who is seen cheerfully helping people. Why not make the ad about her asking him to talk to the troubled-looking man? It's part of his job to make sure that everyone's safe.

Fucking stupid advert. But I was told by a Samaritan's phone answerer to "buck up" and "it sounds like you're very well off really, perhaps you should just calm down" or words to that effect when I called up once, deeply distressed in an ASD meltdown that was scaring me... I didn't know it was a meltdown at the time, pre-diagnosis.

So wouldn't expect anything better from them.

Trust your instincts women, don't approach angry looking strange men on train platforms. "What if I say the wrong thing?" Yeah, what if you do and he takes it as a come on and feels entitled to rape you or he just gets angry and aggressive and is bigger and stronger than you are.

You can still act with compassion towards someone giving you concern without compromising your own safety.

Tired of the "women, you must save men" trope. No. They can fuck off and look out for each other. They've taken too much from us already.

If I saw a disturbed man near the tracks, I would stay the hell away!
Report to a large looking staff member and leave it at that. Maybe they can call reinforcements. DO NOT approach dodgy men on your own! Bloody hell

VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia

Thanks so much for your trouble! will have a read this evening.

TBF I don't think asking where you can get a coffee sounds like a chat-up line. But they could have avoided all accusations by having her say e.g. 'Do you know if I've missed the train to Darlington?'

It is really odd that there's clearly a member of staff there but the message isn't 'report it to them'.
And the presentation of the two women, one with tiny pearl earrings/scraped-back hair/no make-up and the other with bouncy loose hair/red lippy/'boho' hoops) is stereotyped and offensive as all get-out.
I'll be contacting Samaritans.