以心为灯,照亮心灵,穿透黑暗

心之所向,光之所至,黑暗不再

守护心灵,必燃希望,破茧重生 

About Us

We started off as Singapore's 1st Safe Space Intervention for individuals in suicidal distress on 1st November 2023. We were the first mental health group to roll out a community-based virtual peer support buddy programme in March 2024 to better support people with mental health issues in light of changes to the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) Act. 

This was expanded in April 2024 to include an on-demand advisory sevice for family and friends to receive help on how to support those in need. The expansion also saw the creation of Vent Buddies, a temporary facilitated support group focused on validation and healthy communication of suicidal thoughts and feelings while encouraging beneficial emotional release. This is to counter misinformation from online forums/chat groups and prevent misdirection of suicidal tensions.  

Following the successful conclusion of these earlier time-limited programmes, we started to delve deeper into mental health education. On 27 April 2024, we officially adopted the tomato emoji 🍅 as our universal help-seeking communication tool for persons in need and their family/friends. This is the first such attempt in Singapore and the Asian region to promote the widespread use of a visual symbol to fill in emotional cues so that the initiation of mental help-seeking behaviour becomes easier for all. 

 This was followed by the introduction of the Safe U 3-Step Acupressure Emotional First Aid for Psychache © on 2 May 2024. It is meant to complement distress tolerance skills in emotional crises but can also be useful in stressful situations on a daily basis. Utilising principles from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), we were able to implement a simple three step acupoint stimulation method to regulate one's emotions within minutes. Since it is very easy to learn, it can be used both as a self-help tool and also administered to someone in distress. This is also the ony incorporation of TCM emotional regulatory principles in a mental health initiative in Singapore. 

On 6 May 2024, we launched the Safe U Barrier-Focused Suicide Prevention Procedure © . This is a suicide prevention method based on our original concept of establishing successive physical and psychological barriers to prevent the escalation of suicidal behaviour. The main focus is on suicide prevention by the individual and his/her family and friends as we believe that the most proximal form of prevention can have the greatest effectiveness. To allow individuals with suicidal distress and/or high risk of self-harm increased perceived control, we also introduced Safe U's self-developed 3 rubber band method © as part of our procedure. Instead of being a form of substitution, the rubber band forms a visible reminder and personal agreement to keep safe, encourage compassionate self-protective behaviours and signal varying levels of distress to safeguarders. 

We embarked on The SMILE Project on 11 May 2024. This is our side project to collect smiles from the public and create a series which will be presented to anyone who needs a smile in times of sadness and loneliness. It is a meaningful and mutually beneficial project as both sides can experience the joy of smiling and its health effects. A smile from a stranger can mean the world to a person struggling to find happiness each day. 

Following which, we introduced our Safe U Single-Session Transdiagnostic Workshop for Emotional Regulation (Safe U SST EMO ©) on 22 May 2024. This is a combination of Single-Session Intervention and Transdiagnostic Care which are evidence based approaches shown to alleviate general distress, depression and emotional dysregulation. This is also the first of its kind in Singapore. We continue to emphasise on seeing individuals as persons rather than specific diagnoses as well as providing early cost-effective mental health intervention to mitigate the problems of long waiting times and expensive professional services.

We transitioned into a bilingual and bicultural mental health and suicide support service on 25 May 2024, making us one of very few mental health organisations in Singapore capable of delivering culturally sensitive services in both English and Mandarin. Our unique model of care is formally known as the Sociocultural Dissuation Model (SDM).

In line with this transition, our official Chinese name is 新洲守护心灵企划. It represents our wish to safeguard the “hearts and souls” of every Singaporean and functions as a constant reminder to ourselves to rediscover the past so that we can bring about change in the future.

On 21 June 2024, we completed our Safe U Approach to Emotional Regulation & Maintenance ©. This is a comprehensive but accessible guide for any person who has difficulty coping with negative emotions. We simplified our approach in terms of numbers and letters of the alphabet so that everyone can remember. Need regulation? Try our ABC and 123 approach. Need to maintain? Use the DEF and Standardised Finger-Grip methods. Regulatory skills have never been easier to learn.

Following which, we launched Singapore's 1st emotional support plushie in collaboration with Plush Plush SG on 27th June 2024. This is a customised and specially curated Panda Teddy plushie which is imbued with different emotional meanings and meant to function as a transitional object for both kids and adults. This is line with a focus on self-soothing and rediscovering emotional links to happy memories as a source of strength and comfort.

On 30th June 2024, our second workshop was created. The Safe U Suicide & Mental Distress Gatekeeper (SMDG) Workshop © is aimed at training gatekeepers for the community who can not only deal with suicidal cases but also individuals in mental distress. This is different from the usual approach of just focusing on suicide gatekeeping. We wish to increase the capability of gatekeepers to deal with a broader ranger of mental health situations so that their skills become more relevant and useful to community needs.

We pushed on and introduced our workshops on Transitional Objects & Emotional Security (TOES) on 6 July 2024 and Coping with Transitions (CTW) on 24 July 2024. These workshops are aimed helping individuals adapt and cope with transitions between life phases from childhood, adolescence to adulthood. We focus on utilising transitional phenomena as an adjunt therapeutic tool to the four steps of Schlossberg's Transition Theory.

On 15th August, we launched Singapore's 1st and only Death Experience Workshop. This is part of our Suicide Resilience Experiential Project (SREP), which is our major project of 2024. Why Death Experience? You can only appreciate life to the fullest when you understand death. Whether it is just thoughts of death, experiencing threats to life or the loss of someone close to you, they are some of the most important lessons you can get in life.

Our SREP also included the introduction of Singapore's only Self-Harm Prevention & Risk Minimisation (SPRM) Workshop focusing solely on self-harm. This is followed by our Depression First Aider (DFA) and Advanced Suicide & Mental Distress Gatekeeper (A-SMDG) Workshop focusing on upstream and early suicide intervention.

On 13 September 2024, we introduced our first (monthly to bimonthly) informal Chinese psychoeducation programme《懂庄子,懂人生》. This is our way of promoting Chinese culture and incorporating ancient Chinese wisdom and philosophy into the mental health of each and every Singaporean. Zhuang Zi's philosophy can be found in areas of modern psychology as diverse as humanistic psychology (focusing on self-actualisation), transpersonal psychology (interconnectedness of mind, body and spirit as well as cognitive flexibility and positive psychology.

On 9 October 2024, we officially expanded our Suicide Resilience Experiential Project (SREP) into the full fledged Life & Death Education (LDE) programme. This decision follows the success of our Death Experience Workshop. Unlike the concept of Death Cafes, we do not focus solely on normalising conversations around death and dying, we adhere to the concepts of ‘letting death show you the way to live’ and 'approaching life from the perspective of death'. The LDE programme complements our mental health and suicide intervention efforts by dealing explicitly with the fundamental question: If life is finite and death is imminent, how do we lead a meaningful and purposeful life?

With the successful implementation of the LDE programme, we have fully constructed our three main focus areas of mental health, suicide intervention and life & death education by November 2024. These focus areas provide a highly original and comprehensive conceptual framework which stretches the limits of how mental health and suicide support are currently provided in Singapore and most parts of Asia.

Our commitment to early upstream intervention is illustrated by the creation of the Safe U Self-Harm Mitigation Programme © on 21st December 2024. This is the only full-scale intervention programme dedicated to self-harm in Singapore. Our SPRM workshop provided an opportunity for us to pilot several critical ideas which gave rise to a comprehensive programme targeting each and every checkpoint in an individual struggling with self-harm tendencies. The Safe U Self-Harm Mitigation Programme © also feeds directly into the Safe U Suicide Intervention Programme (SAFE UP ©) and broadly overlaps with all three focus areas.

As we move into 2025, we will continue to expand and layer each focus area to increase inclusiveness and extensiveness. You may have noticed that we have a few other specially curated programmes covering the preventive, acute and recovery phases of suicide support. These programmes will be pushed out progressively throughout next year. We will continue to do our best to establish ourselves as a centre of excellence for mental health and suicide support in Singapore.

On 4th Jan 2025, we successfully completed our community outreach project in collaboration with the National Council Against Drug Abuse (NCADA) to initiate behavioural change against drug abuse. This is a multi-session project in which we worked with members of the public on a 1-1 basis to promote lifestyle change while learning about anti-drug messages.

On 13th Jan 2025, we introduced the BECA strategy which targets suicide-related decision making in the community. BECA stands for Behavioural Economics & Emotional-Affective Dynamics for Cognitive biases under Affective Forecasting.

The strategy promotes our principles of accessibility, responsibility and destigmatisation and permeates throughout all our interventions. The significance of the BECA strategy lies in not only providing suicide intervention options for individuals in need but also actively guiding them to make rational decisions for themselves. The preservation of personal autonomy is tantamount in this strategy and contributes significantly the creation of a Safe Space and the reduction of involuntary admissions.

On 18th Jan 2025, we conducted Safe U's Psychological First Aid (PFA) Workshop for tertiary students at the National University of Singapore (NUS). This is a pro bono collaboration with Project First Aid, which is a NUS student group providing Nursing students with the opportunity to learn first aid, as well as practice their skills on conducting health education to others. This PFA workshop is now available to other educational institutions and workplaces.

Following which, we introduced our suicide risk evaluation model (ASM) on 8th Feb 2025. ASM is the acronym for our newly created Aleatoric-Suicidogenic Model and is meant to address the limitations of risk stratification adopted in existing healthcare settings. The ASM is highly holistic and acknowledges the individual's innate resilience against suicidal tendencies. The ASM will be used together with BECA (BECA-ASM) as part of all our programmes. It is our wish that the ASM will eventually be the gold standard for suicide risk evaluation in Singapore. 


Through our determination and innovation, we have been 'filling the gaps' and in the process, unintentionally creating a number of 'firsts'. Why unintentionally? The mental health ecosystem is still developing and there are many areas which are left unexplored. We are simply doing what we can to contribute back to society. It is also one of our aims to provide precedence for future mental health efforts in Singapore. Neophobia is a real concern for many volunteers and clients. If something can be done to transform mental health for the better, we choose to take the lead so that people have the courage to follow and address the neophobia that is holding them back from improving their own lives. 

Big things have small beginnings. We encourage you to start a small gesture today if mental health is something close to your heart.

The SAFE U Pocket Toolkit

We are pleased to invite members of the public to contribute to The SAFE U Pocket Toolkit, which is a living resource for anyone with mental health needs. The focus is on creating a mental health resource that is highly practical and applicable to real-life situations and co-created by the community for the community. 

You can contribute by:

1. Sharing your mental health know how and lived experience. Start off with a mental health issue of your choice and elaborate on how you identified it as a problem, the experiences you went through and how you resolved it. It can be a personal experience or an experience as a caregiver.

2. Think of the information you write as a guide you wished you had when you had the mental health issue or as a gift you wish to send to a person walking the same journey as you.

3. Your contribution doesn't have to be complicated, even simple things like an acronym that helps you remember the warning signs of a mental health condition or an exercise you do to calm your emotions. What works for you might not always work for others but every contribution is an option that people can use in times of need.

4. No lived experience? No worries, you can also contribute anything you read which you found helpful or musings about how you can help people with mental health needs.

Send us your contributions on Instagram or email us at [email protected].

心理健康,从每个小小的思想开始!

请关注星洲守护心灵企划的 Instagram,跟着我们每一期的《懂庄子,懂生活》学习如何活出自我,远离心理问题!


为什么是庄子呢?我们星洲守护心灵企划标志里的蝴蝶其实就是“庄周梦蝶”里的蝴蝶!庄子是东方古代心理学的始祖。东方心理学的特点就是强调人与自然、社会、精神的相互作用,将心理视为一个整体,而不是孤立的个体。虽然新加坡是一个多元文化的社会,儒释道依旧深深影响每个国人的生活和价值观。因此,我们希望大家可以跟我们一起“寻根”,从古人智慧中学习,达到一种自我实现的境界!

我们在2024年已经出了六期,希望您在每一期都学到了一些有用生活知识。请继续关注我们每一期,了解庄子的人生哲理。


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