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About Us

About Youth Suicide Prevention Ireland

All the funds we raise this year will go directly towards funding our mental health awareness and suicide prevention programmes. We rely totally on the generous support of the public as we receive no state funding. Youth Suicide Prevention Ireland, a registered Irish Charity (20070670), is one of the only national charities working specifically to raise awareness and prevent suicide amongst the young people of Ireland.

YSPI has only 2 full-time employees who are our highly-trained facilitators running our programmes. Our facilitators are paid around €25,000 per year. All other administrators including our Trustees are volunteers who donate their time. As of December 2023 the total cost of administering the charity was 12% so 88% of all funds raised can be used to support our vital work.  For more information about our charity visit HERE

Our Mission

"Ireland has the fourth highest teen suicide rate in the EU/OECD"

Well-being of Young People 2017 - UNICEF

Youth Suicide Prevention Ireland has been working for over 10 years to provide free mental health and suicide prevention education and training services to schools and colleges around Ireland. According to the World Health Organisation's 2016 report suicide is the 2nd highest cause of death amongst young people across the World. Sadly Ireland is not spared from this problem which affects almost every community in the country.

In the European Union during 2015, according to Eurostat, there were approximately 56,000 reported deaths by suicide making it one of the leading causes of death. Males accounted for 43,000 of those deaths or 76%.

According to research by UNICEF published in 2017 Ireland has the fourth highest teen suicide rate in the EU/OECD region. The organisation's latest report card on well-being of young people found that Ireland's suicide rate amongst adolescents aged 15 to 19 was 10.3 per 100,000 population and ranks well above the national country average of 6.1 per 100,000.

Schools and teachers are so important to the development of personality, social skills and self-worth in a young person. The WHO states that among the six most important ways of reducing suicide rates is through School-based Interventions.  The Four Steps to Help Programme that we facilitate to schools has been running for 9 years now and in that time we have worked with around 370 schools across the country to provide a comprehensive resource for teachers and students.

Our Services

Our School Visits Programme has been developed over the last 9 years in response to requests from schools and students for a fully integrated youth-orientated mental health awareness and suicide prevention system that can be delivered in the classroom to students aged 16 and above. Essentially the programme consists of:

  1. Classroom based presentation provided by one of our trained facilitators.
  2. A 24 page Student Booklet for each student attending a workshop
  3. Teacher Resource Pack which provides seven lesson plans with worksheets and handouts that build on topics raised in the presentation.
  4. Access for all students to the Free2Talk youth counselling service.
  5. Access to local counselling resources 

We are also able to provide, by arrangement, and again without charge:

  • staff mental health awareness and suicide prevention training
  • information sessions for parents
  • access to educational assessments and psychometric evaluations Mid 2024

School visits are provided free of charge as a core element of our outreach work, but they are booked on a first come, first served basis. If you would like to discuss our Four Steps to Help Programme with our Schools Facilitator please contact us on 1800 828 888 or by email to admin@yspi.ie


Charity Information

For full terms and conditions including our privacy policy click HERE. Our charity registration is 20070670 and can be verified with the Irish Charity Regulator. We are a tax-exempt charitable trust approved by the Irish Revenue Commissioners under charity number CHY18438 and the charity is also an approved body under the Charities Donation Scheme. Our registered office details are: Youth Suicide Prevention Ireland, 83A New Street, Killarney, Co Kerry V93 W3KT. Our contact details are 1800 828 888 admin@yspi.ie. Our office hours are Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm.