Established since 2023 ؛ଓ

The SAFE U Initiative

𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🦋་༘࿐

星洲守护心灵企划

Mental Health | Suicide Intervention | Life & Death Education

When suffering is seen, dignity begins.

Who are we?

SEA's 1st Safe Space Suicide Support Initiative based on an evidence based non-clinical approach

Home to Singapore's 1st Death Experience Workshop

A Specialised Self-Harm Mitigation Service Dedicated to Youths and Young Adults

Hello and welcome! The SAFE U Initiative • 星洲守护心灵企划 is a non-profit community initiative in Singapore providing culturally-sensitive bilingual low to pro bono mental health and suicide support to any individual in need.

We were established in November 2023 but our youthfulness has not stopped us from punching above our weight.

Safe U currently houses the one and only non-clinical suicide intervention service working to reduce involuntary psychiatric admissions in Singapore using a locally adapted evidence-based Safe Haven (Crisis Cafe) Model. In 2025, we expanded our work to incorporate a specialised self-harm mitigation service dedicated to youths and young adults.

We are also committed life & death educators, going beyond normalising conversations around death to actively assisting individuals to lead meaningful and purposeful lives. Our signature Death Experience Workshop is the first in Singapore.

Our unique triad of mental health, suicide intervention and life & death education allows us to provide effective and innovative programmes which enable individuals in need to give life another chance.

The initiative is meant to be accessible to everyone in need and all you have to do is pay it forward！

简介

“守护每个逆境中寻求尊严的心灵"

星洲守护心灵企划（The SAFE U Initiative）是一项在新加坡开展的非营利性社区倡议，旨在为有需要的个人提供具有文化敏感性的双语低收费或免费的心理健康和自杀预防服务。我们通过东南亚首个“安全空间”方式，涵盖了心理健康和自杀服务的全方位支持，致力于消除污名化并推动社区康复。

Safe U 目前设有新加坡唯一一家致力于减少强制性精神科入院的非临床自杀干预服务。我们采用经过实证且结合本地情况改良的“避风港”（危机咖啡馆）模式（Safe Haven Model）。2025 年，我们进一步扩大了服务范围，专门为青少年及年轻成年人提供针对性的自残缓解项目。

此外，我们也是坚定的生命与死亡教育者，不仅促进关于死亡的对话，更积极帮助个人过上充满意义的生活。我们标志性的“死亡体验工作坊”是新加坡首个此类课程。

我们独特的“三位一体”模式（以下），使我们能够提供高效且创新的项目，帮助有需要的人重新点燃对生活的希望。

1. 心理健康
2. 自杀干预
3. 生命与死亡教育

我们的项目围绕以下主题展开：

缓解心理困扰和情感痛苦 🫂

促进心理健康与成长 ❤️‍🩹

通过理解生命与死亡
引导人们过上有意义的人生 🎭

我们专注于自杀的防御支持结构，并通过这三个核心领域相辅相成，形成一个全面的支持网络，以降低新加坡的自杀率。作为推动社会变革的催化剂，我们不断构想并革新新加坡自杀的防御支持结构。我们的愿景是成为亚洲自杀干预的典范。每一个生命的逝去，都是不可承受之重。

加入我们的星旅，共同努力实现“零”自杀社会。

Suicide prevention doesn't have to be scary! Not sure how to help someone at risk of losing their life?

Simply follow the ACT acronym to get started.

1. Ask direct questions about whether someone is thinking about suicide or planning to end their own life. Asking about suicide does not increase one's risk of suicide.

2. Care for someone by demonstrating genuine concern. It doesn't matter if you don't know what to say. Listening and offering a physical presence can be comforting to someone in need.

3. Tell someone if you need support dealing with the situation. This person can be a trusted friend or someone on the end of a mental health helpline. Remember you can always call Mindline at 1771 if you need professional help.

Keen to do more?

Simply contact us for a free psychological first aid (PFA) workshop or a bespoke suicide awareness workshop!

We are open to organisations and members of the public.

Statement of Diversity and Inclusion

The SAFE U Initiative will dedicate ourselves to cultivating and preserving a culture of diversity where all volunteers and participants of our programmes feel safe and respected.

We do this by ensuring everyone involved with Safe U will be treated with utmost care and dignity, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and physical ability.

Our culture focuses on authenticity, responsibility and safety. We strongly believe in promoting diversity and inclusion through these values by creating a supportive environment in a sometimes inauthentic world so that everyone is free to pursue their dreams and work towards self-actualisation.

In the line of our work, we have also encountered a few LGBTQIA2S+ volunteers and participants. We would like to assure them that we offer a non-judgmental and inclusive environment for them to feel valued and supported. Our sincere wish is for them to embrace their authentic self.

Raison d'être

Our Reason for Being

The SAFE U Initiative is a community initiative born out of our desire to change how mental health and suicide support is envisioned in Singapore. We were established in November 2023, making us the first Safe Space Intervention for suicidal individuals in Singapore.

In Australia and the United Kingdom, the concept of Safe Spaces (also known as Safe Havens or Crisis Cafes) reduced psychiatric admissions by 40%. Based on the latest research evidence, we developed and refined our suicide intervention protocol (SAFE UP) in accordance with Singapore's social norms, moral values and mental health safety practices. Through our perseverance and intensive evaluation, we created a suicide intervention programme which is specific to Singapore. We went further by expanding the limits of what a Safe Space can do by effectively covering client presentations spanning the whole mental health spectrum (i.e., basic mental health conditions to self-harm/suicide), thereby creating a totally self-sufficient model which can engage with Singapore's wider mental health network and self-sustain when required.

According to the QPR Institute, everyone except severely suicidal patients can be treated as outpatients.

What this statement implies is that the majority of suicidal individuals—most of whom fall below the highest-risk level—can be safely managed in the community.

We drastically reduce the help-negation effect (i.e., the refusal or avoidance of available help) by providing low barrier access to high-quality community suicide support which is unavailable anywhere else in Singapore. In addition, we recognise the importance of addressing suicide-related decision making within the community context where one is guided to make personal decisions aligned with their own self-interest rather than having their personal autonomy completely taken away from them. We do not believe in exercising the “righting reflex”. So, what are our roles?

We are choice architects and risk communicators.

Based on the principles of behavioural economics and emotional-affective dynamics, our novel multi-faceted suicide support strategy (BECA) excels by targeting cognitive biases subsumed within affective forecasting.

We affirm life by increasing an individual's probability of reaching life-saving decisions.

Concomitantly, we transcend the poor predictivity of risk stratification by creating a compassion-focused suicide evaluation model (ASM) that is pivoted on risk communication.

Why is community management preferred to involuntary psychiatric admission when possible?

The fundamental difference is stigmatisation resulting from linking mental illness directly to suicide even though their relationship is often nuanced and complex. While medical professionals see mental illness from a medical context, the general public views mental illness from a cultural context. Societal conceptions of mental illness (e.g., abormality, unpredictability, craziness and dangerous) are associated with expectations of rejection and being outcasted, resulting in social withdrawal of those who need help the most.

These individuals experience a downward spiral with increasing loss of control of how society views them. The desire to regain control of one's identity does ironically contribute to drastic harmful behaviour aiming to exert ultimate control over societal conceptions and perjorative labels.

Suicide becomes one's last stand.
The last absolute control one has over life.

Community management is a reaffirmation that suicidal individuals, whether mentally afflicted or not, remain an integral part of our social fabric.

No one should ever be condemned to social isolation.

It is our ethical duty to provide opportunities for successful intervention and recovery beyond the confines of a mental institution and into every social space in Singapore.

How does Safe U intervene in the community then?

Well, there is no precedence since no one has been aware or willing to address the gap in suicide support. Our programme is meant to specifically resolve this situation through multi-phasic intensive community management based on robust evidence and innovation. These phases include preventive, acute and recovery-oriented interventions within a bilingual and bicultural ‘safe space’ where principles such as accessibility, responsilibility and destigmatisation are key drivers.

A brief snippet of the acute phase of our comprehensive approach is as follows. When a person approaches us, we conduct a screening followed by our in-house intervention programme (1-2 hours). We then monitor the person for up to 6 months until recovery. We are the only suicide support service focused on preventing suicide by reducing future suicide attempts via a detailed protocol-driven process known as augmented monitoring. This effectively means that we have the most sophisticated suicide monitoring system in Singapore.

With the piloting of our community special purpose teams, we were also able to bridge the gap between preventive and acute interventions through objective and phenomenological gating approaches aimed at rapidly assessing and reducing any imminent risk of suicide.

Our O/PRA Gating Procedure is a set of clearly defined steps used to quickly determine and address critical features of near-suicide risk.

Due to its unique focus on near-suicide risk, the procedure is able to provide immediate and highly specific alleviation of suicidal distress with an effect surpassing that of exististing generic mental health first aid.

Through these innovations, we provide a robust evidence-based alternative to institutionalised care for individuals with low to moderate high risk of suicide by realising true community-based mental health and suicide support.

By valuing the importance of the community, we destigmatise suicide and mental illness through a positive whole-of-society approach involving the empowerment of individuals in need, their caregivers and community volunteers.

We strongly discourage the demeaning of the human condition by over-simplifying suicide and mental illness as mere psychiatric issues and personal deficiencies.

Unsurprisingly, recent studies such as Wu (2026) argue against a reductionist “brain‑only” view of suicide and emphasises that interactions between culture and the brain are significant in producing meaning, risk, and responses to suffering, especially from a East Asian perspective.

Here comes an important question. So, why do we engage in suicide intervention work when it seems so complex and challenging? In the words of renowned Irish poet Brendan Kennelly,

“Though we live in a world that dreams of ending,
that always seems about to give in,
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.”

The world is full of fragility but despite the looming threat of endings, humans possess something within themselves that refuses to accept finality. That inner motivation compels humans to reinvent themselves and find new beginnings in the face of apparent closure.

Our work is to support others to find their new beginnings. To bring order out of chaos.

We strongly believe that helping individuals who “cry from the heart” (cri de coeur) is a moral calling.

When we save a life, we are not only upholding the sanctity of life and perpetuating the goodness that defines us as moral and ethical beings. We are also alleviating human suffering at its most fundamental level and sowing the seeds of transformation.

Living becomes imbued with gentleness, allowing each person to approach each misery or struggle with resilience, empathy and compassion.

What makes us different?

In the complex and ambiguous world which we live in, solutions need to respond well to unanticipated situations. Our suicide intervention programme is not only evidence-based but constantly pushing the boundaries beyond what has been achieved with the limited suicide support existing in Singapore. You won't find a similar one in Singapore and Asia because our work is highly original and experiential. We are not another peer support initiative or crisis hotline. We have moved ahead of the curve in Singapore's National Mental Health and Well-Being Strategy through our forward thinking.

We resolve what is known as the ‘Suicide Prevention Paradox'.

Many people who die by suicide are not necessarily identified as high-risk or have a severe mental illness.

The traditional medicalised model focuses on diagnosis, risk stratification and clinical treatment for individuals deemed at risk of harm to self and others. We balance the mental health system by filling the huge service gap existing between lower level psychological support (peer support & hotlines) and high level psychiatric services (IMH) in Singapore. No one will be denied help just because a person does not fit a one-size-fits-all approach.

We close the gap by focusing on suicide care which specifically empowers vulnerable individuals to be the lead in their life stories.

Our approach is highly collaborative as it leads to better recovery outcomes. In contrast to traditional “top-down” clinical and “bottom-up” non-clinical perspectives, we adopt a “medium-out” dialogical point of view where high levels of trust and reciprocity between beneficiaries and volunteers help to manage uncertainty and open windows of opportunity. Clients assume a greater level of ownership of their mental health situation and are more self-efficacious as compared to care within a psychiatric setting. Such interpersonal trust and reciprocity are social capital which function as effective dissuation against suicide.

Last but not least, we are the only suicide support organisation in Singapore which has a explicit bilingual and bicultural focus. This is reflected distinctively in the way we blend language and culture in what we do. This is crucial given that we are essentially an Asian society whereas most mental health approaches focus on a Western perspective and therefore lack sufficient cultural adaptation to the Singaporean context.

Similarly, languages determine how we perceive and mentally construct the world around (e.g., the language we choose to think or speak can potentially shape the positivity or negativity of our mindsets). Such subtle influences may consequently alter our reactions to adverse situations such as mental distress.

At Safe U, the way we use culture and language is grounded, amongst others, in evidence-based terror management theory, self-categorisation theory and psycholinguistics. However, you don't necessarily have to be fluent or proficient in a particular language or culture to benefit from our Heart Discourse (心语) approach. It can be as simple as perspective taking and making sense of your self-identity.

Our Mottoes

We Journey With You To Give Life A Second Chance

破茧重生

We have two mottoes in English and Chinese to reflect Singapore's bilingualism. Our commitment is to be a beacon of hope so that you never have to walk alone hopelessly in the darkness during times of adversity. We also strive to help you turn away from death and move towards life, so that you can start to appreciate the beauty of your existence.

Our Missions

1. To destigmatise suicide and mental health by reducing involuntary psychiatric admissions in Singapore.

2. To provide dignified and effective suicide and mental health support in a bilingual and culturally sensitive manner.

3. To promote life & death education (LDE) as an important socio-cultural approach to mental wellbeing and suicide prevention.

The focus is on being compassionate to mentally vulnerable individuals who would otherwise fall
through the existing service gap in the local mental health services or experience discrimination due to
their mental health conditions.

We follow the idea of “治病于初萌，防范于未然”.

As such, we believe in managing a mental health condition in its early stages and to prevent a suicidal situation from arising in the first place. This idea is consistent with the Chinese concepts of 防微杜渐 and 治未病. Our emphasis is on early intervention measures so that destigmatisation as well as dignified and effective support can be achieved successfully.

We also go beyond conventional death education to explore the relationship between life and death. This unique approach facilitates a complete transformation from near-death to fulfiling a life of meaning in life and purpose. We don't just teach you how to live. You experience what death is like and take home with you a personal and intimate experience which will change your outlook on life.

Our Vision

Our vision is to be a model of effective suicide intervention in Asia. We aspire to be a catalyst for change in the way suicide support is provided in Singapore.

This is reflected in the way we work outside the system to create our own original methods, procedures, workshops and programmes. It constitutes an intensive and time consuming process which is required to bring about effective and long-lasting change.

Aa part of our ethical duty, we perform a thorough examination of existing local mental health and suicide prevention/intervention programmes and reject plaigarisation by unethical individuals as safety should never be compromised under any circumstances. These individuals whom we are aware of include self-proclaimed psychologists and mental health advocates who profit from lived experience (real or imagined). Unfortunately, the situation is more pervasive than expected. Complicity is something we will never tolerate.

Despite challenges within the existing ecosystem, we will continue to persevere and strive towards completing our reimagination of mental health and suicide support in Singapore and Asia.

This is what we stand for.

Always.

Our Modus Operandi

“One life can save the world”

The statement expresses our emphasis on changing one life at a time. Each person has a completely different life journey from everyone else. Suicide isn't simply a statistic and success outcomes cannot be measured by the number of phone calls and messages received or the amount of money spent on programmes.

The question is:

Have we been transforming lives permanently or have we been averting suicide temporarily under the illusion that people are just numbers?

A life will never be defined by a number. As we do our utmost to increase outreach in the hope that more people will benefit, we must still recognise the unique qualities of each and every person.

When we focus on the individual, we strive to help you write your own future by make lasting changes in the way you think, feel and behave. We seek to change the current situation where individuals ‘float’ around the mental health ecosystem due to unmet needs. We also check if the quality of care received by an individual is indeed commensurate with the statistics reported by various mental health organisations.

By transforming a person, we are essentially amplifying the impact a life can have on the world around him/her as encapsulated by this Chinese sentence below.

“一个心灵的觉醒，如同天地初开，撼动万物根源，激荡每一个生命的脉动。”

If you wonder how this can be true, perhaps you can recall how Steve Jobs revolutionised the way we think about and use technology forever or even how Elon Mask is currently single-handedly transforming electric vehicles and space exploration. We do not have to be a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk to make an impact on society.

We can become the social proof that drives the shift in social norms and normalises the path for others.

The transformation starts from changing each small living moment which influences one's day. One personally significant day can go on to alter a person's life. A life transformed inspires the whole world by acting as a catalyst for change. By delving deeper into the individual, we are in fact providing sustainable person-centred care which permeates throughout the entire society. Less is more.

This is social impact redefined.

Our Values

Authenticity, Responsibility and Safety.

We believe in being compassionate and kind to anyone who approaches us in times of need. Authenticity is a core value which allows us to practise compassion and kindness genuinely without compromising the wellbeing of our volunteers. In doing so, you can be assured that the care you receive comes directly from our heart. You can expect mutual respect between volunteers and clients and the establishment of healthy boundaries. We also take a tough stance against performative kindness, which includes explicit rejection of partners or collaborators who seek to plagiarise, modify or profiteer from our programmes.

Additionally, we encourage a sense of responsibility in our volunteers and clients so that they take full ownership of their actions and behaviours. Everyone plays a part in contributing to a successful mental health outcome and we work towards minimal power imbalance so that therapeutic processes are not disrupted.

Last but not least, the safety of our volunteers and clients are of utmost importance to us. We plan and structure our training and programmes to ensure minimal compromise to psychological, emotional and physical safety.

Without safety, there is no safe space for all.

Our Executive Team

Don't work for recognition, but do work worthy of recognition.

If you wonder why we haven't put a face to our team yet, it's because we do not ask for recognition. You will get to know us personally when you come into contact with our service. Please reserve your appreciation and gratitude to the frontline volunteers who made a difference to your lives. Our volunteers are some of the friendliest and kindest human beings in our little red dot. I can attest to that because I handpicked them personally.

You can count on us to go the extra mile when no one is willing to help you. This extra effort also means that we do get burnt out occasionally and we have to recharge away from the large number of messages that we receive on a daily basis.

Making a lasting positive change on your life is the motivation that keeps us going despite the huge emotional drain.

Most of us are in the medical, psychology or counseling fields. However, we have come together to combine our expertise to help individuals in suicidal distress. It is not uncommon to come across a volunteer with lived experience of mental illness or suicide at The SAFE U Initiative because volunteering helps one to find meaning and purpose in life through sharing of experiences. We do our best to understand you and work together towards the goal of recovery through shared camaraderie.

Why can't our programmes be found anywhere else in Singapore?

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

This is because we always create our programmes from scratch. We do not believe in copying and pasting what is already out there in the community. Everyone is different and the one-fits-all approach you see everywhere does not work well. We would like our volunteers and individuals to have a fulfiling and memorable experience which will enrich their lives. A positive transformation in perception is often the initial step towards change for the better. You can be assured that each programme epouses our kindness, ingenuity and the determination to inspire change in the way mental health care is provided in Singapore. We do it because you matter to us. Only here, only for you.

Why are we low to pro bono?

You only ever have to repay in kindness

We believe in making our services affordable for all as suicide care should be a basic human right. We also make our programmes available to other public and private organisations as we hope to increase the number of access points in the community.

We can be low to pro bono because we are all volunteers with no vested financial interest in the project. We fund our projects through the workshops we run and use the excess funds to subsidise further workshops.

Any charges, if required, pertain to rental and miscellaneous fees for in-person services or costs associated with collaborative projects with partner organisations. We do not receive any renumeration for running these projects and workshops. These services remain free but external costs are unavoidable. We can only sustain within our means so we ask for your kind understanding.

We are advocates of paying it forward. We treat you with kindness in the hope that you will consider doing the the same for others around you.

Kindness can't be bought with money, yet it is more valuable than anything in this world.

We do not care about putting our faces out there, getting media coverage or personal accolades. At Safe U, we are only concerned about true kindness. We absolutely don't give a damn about performative kindness.

To receive true kindness, please be a kindred soul and treat every volunteer with respect. They are just as precious to us as you are. Please always remember that they have sacrificed their time and energy so that you never have to be alone on the path to recovery.

Partner/Collaborate With Us

We welcome partnerships and collaborations with any altruistic individual, social enterprise, non-profit organisation or business with an interest in mental health or suicide support. Our services and training workshops can be provided on demand subject to discussion.

If you would just like to chit chat with us, we are always happy to give our time as long as there is sincerity and mutual respect.

Many of our workshops are provided on a pro to low bono basis and we keep essential programmes such as PFA free for all public and selected private institutions. These guidelines allow us to fund our future programmes while contributing back to the community on a consistent basis.

We don't really care about the money since we are volunteers. We simply request that you don't abuse our kindness.

To ensure transparency, we wish to make clear that any attempt to plaigarise and/or profiteer our programmes is strictly prohibited. We have a zero tolerance policy on unethical, unsafe and dishonest behaviour. We will not hesitate to block you if, in addition to the above behaviours, you are guilty of undesirable attributes such as trolling, harassment or poor attitude.

We do not entertain requests from organisations to overload workshops with participants. Please also do not ask us to pass off basic workshops as advanced workshops and certify your participants as competent. We would rather teach deserving organisations for free rather than be complicit in these immoral antics.

You can be absolutely sure that we hold ourselves to the same high standards that we request of you.

Volunteer With Us

If you are a student or graduate in Psychology and Counseling, we welcome you to join us as a skills-based volunteer. We are also happy to invite volunteers with lived experience of suicide or mental illness. The core attributes that we look out for are kindness, safety and a sense of responsibility. Other positions are available. Please enquire by contacting us.

However, please note that not every person who approaches us is suitable for the work we do. We are stringent even to volunteers who have joined us and will not hesitate to rescind their volunteer opportunity in the event of recurring absenteeism, poor attitude or unsafe behaviours. Rejection has nothing to do with you personally. We simply have a responsibility to enforce psychological safety for everyone

Thank you for understanding.

Donate To Us

If you wish to support our cause so that we can keep the services low to pro bono, please contact us directly through our webform.