There is a crucial truth that almost no safeguarding framework, regulator, or victim support service is willing to name.
Most victims of financial wrongdoing do not develop suicidal thoughts because they are mentally ill.
They develop them because they are being actively crushed by an unresolved injustice that will not stop.
As one survivor put it:
“I didn’t have a mental health problem.
I had a Lloyds problem.”
That sentence matters more than any policy document.
Because it exposes a dangerous category error that sits at the heart of how society responds to institutional harm.
The Category Error That Kills People
When a victim reaches breaking point, the system’s default response is to medicalise the distress:
- “You should talk to someone.”
- “Have you tried counselling?”
- “Call a crisis line.”
- “This sounds like depression or anxiety.”
And in acute crisis moments, those services are essential.
They save lives.
They must exist.
They are non-negotiable.
But here is the part no one wants to confront:
For victims of institutional wrongdoing, suicidal ideation is often not an internal psychological disorder.
It is a rational response to an external, ongoing, structurally induced harm.
In plain terms:
They are not trying to escape their own minds.
They are trying to escape a system that will not stop hurting them.
So while crisis helplines can help someone survive the night, they cannot:
- Fix the bank
- Reverse a fraudulent transaction
- Correct a court error
- Force a regulator to investigate
- Stop legal harassment
- Recover stolen money
- End procedural gaslighting
- Or remove the institutional threat that is still actively destroying the person’s life
Which means the core driver of despair remains untouched.
And when that happens repeatedly, victims begin to internalise a lethal message:
“If the system won’t change, and I can’t make it stop, then the only variable left is me.”
That is how institutional cruelty becomes self-destruction.
Why So Many Victims Reject Mental Health Framing
This is why so many survivors instinctively recoil when their distress is framed as “a mental health issue.”
Not because they are in denial.
Not because they reject support.
Not because they are anti-therapy.
But because they know, at a gut level, that something fundamental is being misdiagnosed.
They are not sick.
They are being:
- financially ruined
- legally threatened
- reputationally destroyed
- procedurally silenced
- institutionally gaslit
- and left in permanent uncertainty
Being told to “work on their mental health” while the injustice continues feels like:
- a deflection
- a minimisation
- a subtle form of blame
- and another way of being erased
It feels like being told:
“The problem is how you’re reacting to this — not what’s being done to you.”
That framing doesn’t just fail to help.
It often makes things worse.
The Missing Layer: Structural Harm Response
This is the gap Get SAFE exists to fill.
We are not:
- a therapy service
- a crisis line
- a justice crusade
- a regulator
- or a lobbying organisation
We are something else entirely.
We are a structural harm-response layer.
That means we operate in the space between:
Crisis care
(“Help me survive tonight.”)
and
System reform
(“Let’s change the law so this never happens again.”)
Most victims are trapped in that middle zone for years.
Too broken for abstract reform talk.
Too lucid for pure mental health framing.
Too traumatised to think clearly.
Too exhausted to escalate endlessly.
And still being actively harmed by the same institution every single day.
That is the zone Get SAFE is designed for.
What Actually Reduces Suicidal Ideation in These Cases
This is uncomfortable, but it’s true.
For victims of institutional harm, suicidal ideation is not reduced primarily by talking about feelings.
It is reduced by changing external conditions.
Specifically:
- When the escalation stops
- When the harassment slows down
- When the case becomes structured instead of chaotic
- When someone finally understands what actually happened
- When a realistic next step appears
- When a single leverage point is identified
- When the person regains some procedural agency
- When the fight becomes bounded instead of endless
In other words:
Not when the person becomes “mentally stronger.”
But when the system becomes less overwhelming.
That is not psychology.
That is survival logic.
The Three-Layer Model Get SAFE Actually Operates
To keep this ethical, safe, and honest, Get SAFE works on a three-layer reality model:
1) Crisis Layer — When Life Is at Immediate Risk
When someone is in acute suicidal crisis, or showing clear death-ground psychology:
We do not attempt justice work.
We do not attempt reframing.
We do not attempt strategy.
We refer immediately to professional support:
Samaritans — 116 123
CALM — 0800 585858
Mind — mind.org.uk
This boundary is non-negotiable.
Because no justice outcome is worth a human life.
2) Structural Harm Layer — When the System Is Still Actively Breaking Them
This is where Get SAFE operates.
When someone is:
- suicidal because of ongoing institutional harm
- not in immediate crisis
- still capable of basic decision-making
- overwhelmed, exhausted, and despairing
- trapped in procedural chaos
- and being actively retraumatised by regulators, banks, courts, or legal processes
Our job is not to therapise them.
Our job is to:
- stabilise their exposure to institutional harm
- slow down escalation loops
- structure their evidence into something usable
- restore procedural agency
- contain the fight into something survivable
- and identify one realistic leverage point
This is not mental health care.
It is situational harm reduction.
And it is often what prevents a mental health crisis from becoming terminal.
3) System Reform Layer — When the Person Is No Longer the Front Line
This is where:
- public inquiries
- regulatory reform
- legal precedent
- investigative journalism
- and policy change
actually belong.
It is not fair to make traumatised victims carry this layer on their backs.
Get SAFE’s job is to:
- preserve their story
- externalise their evidence
- and make sure the truth can survive
even if the individual cannot keep fighting forever.
Why This Distinction Is Not Optional
If we collapse all three layers into one, we create lethal contradictions.
We either:
- tell traumatised people to “focus on their mental health” while the injustice continues
or - tell suicidal people to “keep fighting for justice” as if moral endurance is a treatment plan
Both kill people.
Get SAFE exists to hold the middle line.
Not to replace crisis services.
Not to replace justice movements.
But to stop people falling into the abyss between them.
The Hard Truth That Changes Everything
Here is the sentence that should sit at the centre of all victim safeguarding:
Many victims are not suicidal because they are broken.
They are suicidal because the system will not stop breaking them.
Once you accept that, everything changes.
You stop asking:
“What’s wrong with this person?”
And you start asking:
“What external harm must be reduced for this person to survive?”
That is the ethical pivot Get SAFE is built on.
The Line We Hold
Get SAFE will always say this clearly:
We do not promise justice.
We do not promise recovery.
We do not promise survival.
But we do promise:
- not to medicalise structural cruelty
- not to romanticise martyrdom
- not to push people into endless escalation
- not to pretend feelings are the core problem
- not to replace clinical care
- and not to abandon people to a system that is quietly waiting them out
We exist to reduce the external harm load.
Because sometimes the most life-saving intervention is not a hotline.
It is stopping the institution from hurting the person one more day.
If You’d Like to Help This Work Continue
Get SAFE exists because people choose to stand quietly alongside those facing financial harm.
There is no pressure to give.There is no “target thermometer.”There is no guilt-based appeal.
But if this story resonates with you — and you believe no one should have to face financial trauma alone — your support helps keep this work available to the next person who reaches out in panic, confusion, or despair.
Every £50 provides a bursary for one person to access:
• Trauma-informed recovery support
• Guided self-advocacy tools
• Evidence-structuring templates
• Life-stabilisation planning
• Fellowship peer support
• Secure testimony preservation
That support can mean the difference between someone breaking down in isolation — and someone finding clarity, steadiness, and dignity again.
If you’d like to contribute, you can do so here:
[Scan for the Support Get SAFE on Crowdfunder]
Whether you give, share, or simply hold this work in goodwill — thank you for being part of a more humane response to financial harm.
Academy of Life Planning 