Learning to Save Lives
ADVANCE
Mental Health Awareness Funding Campaigns
We partner with individuals, organizations, and communities across our state to raise critical funds for mental health research and education—helping prevent suicide and save lives.
Through community-led fundraising efforts, we bring awareness to the importance of mental health while supporting research that strengthens prevention, education, and care.
Why Research Matters
Research matters because suicide is preventable—and understanding saves lives.
Mental health challenges and suicidal crises are complex. They are shaped by biology, trauma, access to care, social support, stigma, and lived experience. Research helps us better understand these factors so that prevention efforts are informed, compassionate, and effective.
For families and communities impacted by mental illness, research offers something deeply meaningful: answers, direction, and hope. It helps identify what works, what doesn’t, and where gaps in care still exist—so fewer people fall through the cracks.
At Sisters Taking On the Prevention of Suicide (STOPS), we believe research is not distant or abstract. It is personal. It informs how we educate, how we advocate, and how we support women and families walking alongside mental health challenges.
When research is paired with education, policy reform, and community support, it becomes a powerful tool for prevention—one that helps turn knowledge into action and compassion into care.
Understanding leads to prevention—and prevention saves lives.
What Research Makes Possible Research makes progress possible.
Through continued study, discovery, and shared knowledge, research helps shape a future where suicide prevention efforts are stronger, more informed, and more effective. It deepens our understanding of mental health challenges and illuminates pathways toward healing, early intervention, and recovery.
Research makes it possible to:
Most importantly, research helps transform lived experience into learning—so that the pain families endure today can help prevent loss tomorrow.
Every discovery brings us one step closer to prevention, healing, and hope.
How Research and Science Work Together
Research and science go hand in hand—especially when it comes to understanding the brain.
Advances in neuroscience and behavioral science have deepened our understanding of how the brain responds to stress, trauma, depression, anxiety, and substance use. Research helps explain how these conditions affect thinking, emotions, decision-making, and behavior—and why some individuals may be more vulnerable during times of crisis.
Through science, we are learning that mental illness is not a personal failure or weakness. It is a health condition influenced by brain chemistry, life experiences, environment, and access to care. This understanding is essential to reducing stigma and increasing compassion.
Research grounded in science makes it possible to:
At STOPS, we value research that honors both science and lived experience. When scientific discovery is paired with compassion, it strengthens prevention efforts and helps communities respond with knowledge, understanding, and hope.
When science informs research, and research informs action, prevention becomes possible.
How Do I Get Involved?
Everyone has a role to play in suicide prevention.
Through fundraising campaigns and community partnerships, STOPS brings women and supporters together to raise awareness and generate critical resources that advance research, education, and prevention efforts.
By getting involved, you help:
Whether you choose to participate in a fundraising event, support a campaign, or partner with us in other meaningful ways, your involvement helps move prevention forward.
To learn more or get involved in an upcoming fundraising effort, we invite you to contact us or explore current opportunities to engage.
When we come together, knowledge grows—and lives are protected.
A Hope-Centered Close To Participate in Fundraising Activities
At Sisters Taking On the Prevention of Suicide (STOPS), we believe research is an investment in life—one that honors those we’ve lost and protects those still here.
Through continued learning, shared knowledge, and collective action, research helps light the way toward understanding, prevention, and hope.
Together, we move knowledge forward.
Together, we save lives.