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 2024 the total cost of administering the charity was 13% so 87% of all funds raised can be used to support our vital work.  For more information about our charity and to view our latest Annual Report and Audited Financial Statements 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 17 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 Let's Talk Programme that we facilitate to schools has been running for 4 years now and in that time we have provided every secondary school and college across the country with comprehensive mental health awareness and suicide prevention resources for teachers and students.