People who have survived an attempt and gone public often say the treatment they got afterward — locked down in a hospital ward, with little chance to confide in a sympathetic caregiver — was dehumanizing. They describe encountering a taboo against talking about their experiences from doctors and therapists as well as family and friends. And they identify few, if any, support groups; most are run by and for relatives and friends of people who did commit suicide — and often harbor some anger at the selfishness of the act.

“You’re basically punished for talking about it, wherever you turn,” said Leah Harris, 38, of Arlington, Va., who works for the National Empowerment Center, an organization of recovered psychiatric patients, and has spoken about her own attempt at 16 with prescription medications. “Even in treatment settings, all the interventions are brought down on you if you even mention it. So you just learn to shut up.”

Ms. Harris and Ms. Stage, who has created a photo exhibit of survivors, posted at LiveThroughThis.org, are among dozens whose stories are becoming known in Internet forums and through social media. Others include Kevin Hines, who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000 and survived; and Craig A. Miller, whose book, “This Is How It Feels,” describes his attempt to kill himself with prescription pills and his recovery.

“For some people, the experience is a core part of their identity, and for others, it’s an experience that happened and they’ve moved on — they’re an accountant, a triathlete, an artist, whatever it is,” said William Schmitz Jr., a psychologist in Baton Rouge, La., and president of the suicide association. “This is the best advertisement for getting treatment, showing that people get better and lead full, productive lives.”

It will be no simple thing to figure out what preventive efforts work. Suicide is not a diagnosis but an unpredictable act. Peer counseling programs have helped people living with schizophrenia or addiction, for example, but it is much harder to identify people at risk of suicide who might be helped by contact with survivors of suicide attempts.

One research project underway will test whether people talking publicly about their experience of surviving suicide can reduce an audience’s prejudices against others like them.

“What we’ve found, with most mental disorders, is that education by itself doesn’t affect stigma much — but contact does,” said Patrick Corrigan, a psychologist at the Illinois Institute of Technology who is working with the San Francisco-based Center for Dignity, Recovery and Stigma Elimination, which has set up a speakers bureau. “We expect to find the same thing here.”