The number of individual callers to a telephone service that provides counselling to people who have been abused has jumped by 22% so far this year.

Over half of these callers have said they were sexually abused, a slight increase on the same period last year.

Connect Counselling, which is part-funded by the HSE, provides counselling services over the phone to people who have suffered abuse. It operates for 20 hours per week, from 6pm to 10pm every Wednesday to Sunday.

According to its latest figures, it has supported 470 individual callers in the first 11 months of this year, and the overall number of calls to the service, including out-of-hours calls, is expected to exceed 10,000 by the end of this year.

The most common setting for abuse among callers was within the family (45%), followed by the community (27%). Institutional abuse accounted for 16% of all calls overall, however this tended to rise during periods of public focus on this type of abuse.

Among those who reported abuse in their families, this was most often perpetrated by their father (23%), mother (20%), both parents (15%) or brother (12%).

Among those who said they were abused by their mothers, 20% said they were sexually abused.

Meanwhile, the figures also revealed that almost two in three callers to the service were women and a high proportion of calls were received from Dublin, Cork and Galway.

"We would encourage more callers from rural areas, particularly the western seaboard counties," commented Connect manager, Theresa Merrigan.

She said that the high number of callers during 2014 had ‘placed a pressure on staff to find other services for callers as there is a concern around Connect's ability to provide intensive ongoing support to such a high number of individual callers'.

"Most callers are in need of intensive support, and while Connect can support people through crisis, our goal is to provide initial support and then direct people towards face-to-face services where they can receive the support of multidisciplinary teams," she noted.

The service is available from 6pm to 10pm every Wednesday to Sunday on 1800 477 477. For more information, click here