Become a ZSA Friend to help support suicide awareness and prevention
14 May 2025
This Mental Health Awareness Week we're inviting people to make a real difference to suicide awareness and prevention by becoming a friend of the Zero Suicide Alliance.
This Mental Health Awareness Week we’d like to tell you about how you can get involved in supporting this important work.
Supporting our zero suicide goal with a regular donation
Becoming a ZSA Friend and donating a small monthly gift is an extremely effective way to help ZSA plan for the future and make suicide prevention something everyone can get involved in. Your monthly donation provides a steady income stream, allowing us to build and maintain our free accessible training and resources.
For as little as £5 a month, you can empower us to educate and equip individuals and organisations with the tools they need to support suicide awareness and prevention.
Join us in raising awareness, challenging stigma, and making suicide prevention a cause everyone can get involved in.
Your support could help someone know what to do if they see someone in crisis.
“Ever since I first came across the Zero Suicide Alliance’s suicide prevention training through work, I’ve been a strong advocate of it, urging friends, colleagues and relatives to take the course. Like most people, I sat down for 20 minutes, absorbed the messages and then got on with my life.
That was over a year ago and I always meant to go back and refresh my memory about what to do if you came across someone in crisis. Of course, like all the best intentions, they get shelved while other activities take priority.
So, when I came across a teenager sat on the bridge over the River Severn on my way home from a night out with old friends in Worcester last summer, I was desperately searching my memory banks to remember what to do and, more specifically, how not to react.
I remembered enough to know I should be direct, non-judgemental and try and direct them towards help. After establishing they were in crisis, I suggested they talk to someone who could really help and rang the police, who picked them up moments later.
The moral of my little story is that as soon as I returned to work, I went through the training once again and have set up a reminder to do it again every six months. I didn’t think I’d ever need to know what to do in such a situation but my random situation proves it could happen to anyone.”
So much more than a financial contribution
Becoming a friend is so much more than a financial contribution, you will be joining a group of nationwide ZSA friends who share the same vision to make suicide prevention something everyone can get involved in.
ZSA funding in 2024/25 has already allowed us to support the launch of the redevelopment of ZSA's Suicide Awareness Training - a short, free, online course that can be taken by anyone who wants to learn basic suicide awareness and prevention skills. Over 90,0000 people had completed this training within its first 8 months of launch, and this continues to grow.
Our charity has also supported funding for ZSA’s newly updated Social Isolation and Loneliness Training which launched this Mental Health Awareness Week. The training looks at the impact social isolation and loneliness can have on mental health and shares tips for spotting the signs that someone may be struggling and how you can support them.
Your support, big or small, helps make a difference.
The Zero Suicide Alliance is an initiative hosted by Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust and charitably funded via Mersey Cares NHS Charity (charity registration number: 1191576).
What could a regular gift do?
With your donations we can continue to deliver free, accessible training opportunities so more people can learn vital skills and confidence to talk to someone struggling with suicidal thoughts.
By donating to our fund, you support this zero suicide ambition and help us to:
Develop and deliver new training opportunities
Support people to recognise what actions they can take to towards suicide awareness and prevention
Continue research, develop and maintain accessible digital suicide data tools
Keep the conversation going, sharing the knowledge and skills so that everyone has the opportunity to gain confidence to talk about suicide and challenge stigma.
As a ZSA friend you will receive:
A posted welcome pack with your ZSA Friend certificate and badge, exclusive quarterly newsletters to keep you informed of the difference you are helping to make and an invitation for ZSA membership.
