Welcome to United Suicide Survivors International
United Suicide Survivors International is an independent global organization that serves as a home for people who have experienced suicide loss, suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts and feelings, and their friends and families – collectively known as people with lived experience with suicide – to leverage their expertise for large scale change.
We help people turn their pain into purpose and save lives.
Our Story
Suicide, overdose and addictions impact millions of individuals, families, workplaces and communities throughout the globe each year. In the United States, the CDC estimates 1 person dies by suicide every 11 minutes, and that doesn’t account for the millions of people struggling with addiction, poverty, discrimination, lack of access to care and resources, and other factors that play a role in suicide, overdose, and mental health and wellbeing. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Decades of research now confirms what survivors of suicide already know. The missing piece in suicide and overdose prevention, and addiction and mental health recovery is the voices and expertise of those who have experienced suicide loss, attempts, and who have overcome suicidal thoughts, feelings, pain and despair.
People with lived experience hold a special wisdom that is powerful enough to change culture, policies and systems to save lives. The voices of lived experience bring truth, accountability, humanity, and desperately needed leadership to our communities, including in the development of policies, systems, and community culture. United Suicide Survivors International (US) provides a homebase from which people with lived experience can discover their role as changemakers and lead to create culture, systems and policy change.
United Suicide Survivors International provides a platform for people with lived expertise of suicide and their supporters to stand in their power, turn their pain into purpose, and boldly challenge outdated approaches to suicide prevention and mental health and wellbeing. Based on best practices in suicide prevention and lived experience innovation, US works to: build, nurture and promote a sense of community among lived expertise leaders; amplify the voices of live experience; provide lived-experience informed tools to empower policy, system and culture change, and cultivate international lived experience wisdom from across the globe.
Influenced by the International Association of Suicide Prevention, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and Australia’s Roses in the Ocean, United Suicide Survivors International focuses on the evidence-based power of storytelling to create change and works directly with workplaces and communities to implement lived experience informed best practices to help end suicide for all people everywhere.
Our Mission & Vision
Our mission is to create a world worth living in where all people prosper by: serving as a home for the survivor community and supporters; amplifying the voices of lived experience advocates; providing tools to facilitate cultural change; and cultivating international lived expertise. We envision a world where lived expertise becomes the fulcrum that leverages all suicide prevention efforts. Our complete vision is to see a day when we are no longer needed.
Our Core Beliefs, Guiding Principles and Values
Storytelling Matters - We believe in the power of lived experience and telling our personal stories to heal, inspire and ignite action.
Survivor Allyship and Community - We recognize the importance of the shared experience of those who have experienced suicide loss, suicide attempts, suicidal thoughts and feelings, and their friends and families to create change.
Nothing About US Without US - We believe mental health and prevention efforts should be centered on and fully informed by those with lived experience.
Community & Workplace Strategies - We believe that planting the seeds of change at the workplace and community level is one of the most effective ways to create immediate system, policy and cultural change.
Convening - We serve as a platform and home for survivors to connect, lead and stand together for change.
Community – We believe in the power of community and collaboration to build strong networks to advance our shared mission and vision.
Cultivation – We embrace our role to lift up and amplify the voices of survivors.
Inclusion - True change requires diversity of thought and action. We recognize that the lived experience of survivors from all experiences, backgrounds and walks of life can help us achieve our vision. We further recognize the role of discrimination, marginalization and exclusion on people and populations and strive to create an organization where all people feel safe, valued, welcome, heard, supported and included.
Collaboration - Our work is about shared goals, not status or affiliation. We believe in the power of community and teamwork to create change.
Action - We recognize that awareness is meaningless without action and strive to uplift and encourage one another to actively engage in making change.
Courage - We have a willingness to proceed in spite of the fear and rejection by others. We aim to build and nurture survivors to lead change.
Our Goals
Community Building: Support those with lived experience in discovering their role as change champions and advocates through community-building and convening focused on leadership development, collaboration, and advocacy.
Lived Expertise: Amplify the voices of lived expertise leaders to advocate for policy, systems and cultural change
Best Practices: Provide lived-experience informed tools and best practices for lived experience leaders, advocates, supporters, workplaces and communities
Cultivate: Bring together and amplify international lived-experience informed best practices and resources to expedite global zero suicide