Editorial standards
Most sites publish a policy like this and rely on everyone remembering it. Where we could, we have turned ours into checks that run before the site can be published — so a lapse breaks the build rather than reaching you.
The five commitments
- We never describe, name or compare methods of suicide, anywhere on this site — including in statistics, stories and news coverage.
- We never publish a crisis contact we have not checked against the provider's own page, and every one shows the date a human last checked it.
- We never assign anyone an individual suicide risk score. Risk prediction is not accurate at the level of one person, and a reassuring 'low risk' label is actively dangerous.
- We never host a forum, comment section or open message board. There is no safe way to moderate an unmoderated conversation about suicide at 3am.
- We never put a sign-in wall, a pop-up or an advert between someone in crisis and a phone number.
What is enforced by the build
Three of those commitments are machine-checked every time the site is rebuilt:
- No method content. Every page, every content file and every string in our data is scanned for terms that name, describe or compare the ways people end their lives, for stigmatising phrasing such as "committed suicide" or "successful attempt", and for sensational framing such as "epidemic" or "spiralling". Stigmatising and sensational language can be allowed on a specific page that is teaching about it — that is how our language guide can quote the phrases it advises against. Method content has no such exemption and never will.
- No unchecked contact details. A helpline number with no verification record is not rendered anywhere. The build also fails if any published contact was last checked more than 180 days ago, and fails if any claim about whether a service will contact emergency services lacks a citation to that service's own published policy. How that works in detail.
- No broken promises about takedowns. When someone withdraws consent for a story they have shared, the build fails while their words are still on the site.
How we write
- Plain words. Someone at 2am does not search for "suicidal ideation". Clinical terms appear where they are genuinely useful — for talking to a doctor, or for finding this page in a search — and never as the only way something is said.
- No false cheer. We do not tell anyone that things always get better, because nobody in the middle of it believes that and being told it teaches them that this site does not understand. We say what is true: that this feeling is not permanent even when it presents itself as permanent, and that most people who survive it are glad later.
- No instructions dressed as support. "Just go for a walk" is not advice, it is a way of ending a conversation.
- We say when we do not know. A country with no verified service says so on its own page. A statistic with no defensible source is not published. An unclear policy is shown as unclear rather than smoothed into reassurance — being wrong in the reassuring direction is the most dangerous error available to us.
Sources
Contact details come from the provider's own page and nowhere else — not a directory, not a news article, not another charity's list. Every published contact links to the page it was checked against so you can confirm it yourself in one click.
Where we describe what research shows, we describe the weight of evidence rather than a single study, and we say plainly when something is contested.
What we are not
Rise From The Edge is not a crisis service, not a medical provider, and not affiliated with any of the organisations listed here. Nobody monitors this site. We do not take payment for listings, we carry no advertising, and no organisation has ever paid to appear.
Corrections
A number that no longer connects is the most serious thing that can go wrong here, and reports of one go to the top of the queue and are checked the same day. Anything else, we fix and say so.
Tell us if something is wrong — you do not have to give a name.