Samaritans, an organisation best known for providing direct support either over the phone or face to face to people suffering from distress, is to branch out into a new area of work aimed at improving people's emotional health generally.
An emotional health promotion strategy is being launched in both Ireland and Britain which aims to educate people about emotional health and provide them with coping skills.
It will also try to change attitudes generally towards emotional health.
The strategy is being launched in the 50th year of Samaritans and is the result of a three-year internal review.
It will be divided into a range of projects that target different groups and it is hoped that the first projects to be developed will be modules for schools and training courses for people in the workplace.
"This is a radical step forward for Samaritans.
"This is us going out to people and telling them what they can do to improve their emotional health," said public relations manager Paul O'Hare.
Emotional health, he said, could be thought of as well-being and an important aspect of this was reducing stress.
The aim of the strategy is to tackle the causes of emotional distress and in this way help prevent acute crisis situations from arising. It is about encouraging people to develop skills that will help them when problems arise in their lives.
"Crises and emotional health are issues for everybody and what we are saying is that it is possible to do something about them," Mr O'Hare said.
For example, people could be taught skills to help them to handle relationships or to cope with various different family situations, he said.
The strategy will be pursued initially through work on a number of pilot schemes and Samaritans are looking for groups interested in taking part.
Mr O'Hare said examples of possible groups include a class of school pupils, a section within a company, a team in a sports club, a community group or an old people's group.
He said all that was needed was for people within the group or a leader of a group, such as a teacher, to have an interest in improving the emotional health of those involved.
Given the high rate of suicide among young men, he said, Samaritans were particularly interested in gaining access to such groups, as they were often very difficult to reach.
Mr O'Hare said that while it was not a suicide prevention strategy, it aimed to "work towards \ Samaritans vision of a society where fewer people die by suicide".
He encouraged anybody with an interest in the strategy to get in touch and even if they could not take part in the pilot schemes, Samaritans could supply them with information on emotional health.
Mr O'Hare said that before the strategy was implemented more widely, the work done on pilot schemes would be comprehensively evaluated and followed up, he said.