The first suicide prevention center, the Save-a-Life League, was founded in 1906 in New York, the result of a meeting between minister Harry M. Warren and a suicidal young woman. After her suicide attempt, from which she later died, the woman told Warren, “I think maybe if I had talked to someone like you, I wouldn’t have done it.” Warren was spurred by the woman’s words to organize a network of people who would be available to talk to anyone who was considering suicide.

The suicide prevention movement remained small until the 1960s, when suicide came to be seen as a social problem. Most of the two hundred secular suicide prevention centers now operating in the United States are affiliated with local mental health associations and depend on community donations. To boost monetary support, in their early...