A new programme targeting secondary school students and seeking to improve the emotional health of young people will be launched today.
The Deal (Developing Emotional Awareness and Learning) programme will be launched by the Samaritans simultaneously in the Republic and the UK.
A resource pack will be sent to post-primary schools throughout the State.
The aim of the Deal programme is to raise awareness of emotional health among young people and to help teenagers develop positive ways of coping with stressful situations they face in life.
It will help students differentiate between positive and negative coping strategies and also challenge the stigma around asking for help.
The resource pack includes a DVD with separate sections for staff and pupils, lesson plans, fact sheets and suggested activities for staff.
One in five children in Ireland, or six in a classroom of 30, have a mental or behavioural disorder, according to the Irish College of Psychiatrists.
Research in 2003 showed that Ireland had the second-highest rate of youth suicide among 30 OECD countries.
Phil Huston, director of the Samaritans Dublin branch, said that the Deal programme comes with a number of lessons ready to be given to students in the 14-16 age group.
"It's a fully developed programme for schools and aimed especially at that age group, who need a lot of encouragement to be able to talk about their problems," she said.
Ms Huston also said that young people needed to realise that the ability to ask for help was actually a sign of strength rather than weakness.
"There is a stigma attached to asking for help and especially for asking for psychiatric help, and that needs to be taken away," she said.
Patricia Byrne, deputy director of the Samaritans schools outreach programme in Dublin, said the Deal programme could be used by either Samaritan volunteers or teachers in schools.
She added that it would complement the Samaritans' existing schools programme, where volunteers from the 20 Samaritans branches in the 32 counties are invited to schools to talk to students.
She also stressed that, with more people dying through suicide in Ireland than on the roads, it was vital to make contact with people when they were young to assist them in improving their emotional health, to help them develop coping mechanisms and to encourage them to ask for help.
Ms Huston said the problems young people have about asking for help is highlighted by the success of the Samaritans text service, which has received 300,000 texts from young people in Ireland and Britain since its launch in April.
"The majority of people who contact our text messaging service are in very serious situations, far more serious than the calls we get by phone," she said.