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The online itinerary planner for the 2017 Suicide Summit is now available!
Click here to view the complete program, including abstracts and a complete speaker list.
Click here to view the 2017 Suicide Summit Abstracts
Click here to view the Speaker Disclosures for the 2017 Suicide Summit.
Keynote Speakers
|Keynote Speaker
Suicide Prevention: A View from the NIMH
|Joshua Gordon
Director, National Institute of Mental Health
Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Gordon received his MD/PhD degree at the University of California, San Francisco and completed his Psychiatry residency and research fellowship at Columbia University. He joined the Columbia faculty in 2004 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry where he conducted research, taught residents, and maintained a general psychiatry practice. In September of 2016, he became the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Dr. Gordon's research focuses on the analysis of neural activity in mice carrying mutations of relevance to psychiatric disease. His lab studies genetic models of these diseases from an integrative neuroscience perspective, focused on understanding how a given disease mutation leads to a behavioral phenotype across multiple levels of analysis. To this end, he employs a range of systems neuroscience techniques, including in vivo anesthetized and awake behaving recordings and optogenetics, which is the use of light to control neural activity. His work has direct relevance to schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, and depression.
Dr. Gordon's work has been recognized by several prestigious awards, including the The Brain and Behavior Research Foundation – NARSAD Young Investigator Award, the Rising Star Award from the International Mental Health Research Organization, the A.E. Bennett Research Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry, and the Daniel H. Efron Research Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
|Keynote Speaker
|Maria Oquendo
University of Pennsylvania
Maria Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D.
Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D. is Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Oquendo graduated Summa cum Laude from Tufts University. She attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and completed her residency training at the Payne Whitney Clinic of New York Hospital Cornell.
Her expertise is in the diagnosis, pharmacologic treatment, and neurobiology of Bipolar Disorder and Major Depression with a special emphasis on suicidal behavior and in Global Mental Health. Internationally known for neurobiological studies of suicidal behavior, Dr. Oquendo has used PET and MRI to map brain abnormalities in mood disorders and suicidal behavior, to disambiguate common and divergent biological contributors to each. In 2003, when issues regarding antidepressants' potential risk for inducing suicidal behavior first arose, Dr. Oquendo and colleagues were commissioned by the FDA to develop a classification system to examine suicide-related events in the data. This system is endorsed by the FDA and CDC and now used worldwide. Oquendo first proposed suicidal behavior should be its own diagnostic category in 2008. Arguing it would facilitate tracking of high risk patients in medical records, she succeeded in adding it to DSM-5's appendix in 2013. Critically, this conceptualization addresses the fact that suicidal behavior occurs in conditions from schizophrenia to autism, not only as a depressive symptom. Her research to support its validity and reliability as a diagnostic entity is ongoing. She has authored or co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed articles.
Dr. Oquendo is President of the APA, President of the International Academy of Suicide Research and past President of the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatrists. She is also Vice President of the Board of Directors of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and a member of the National Institute of Mental Health's Advisory Council. She is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American College of Psychiatrists.
Her awards include Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (1993); Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill for Commitment to Multicultural and Underserved Communities (2002); Gerald Klerman Award from the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (2005), National Hispanic Medical Association Hispanic Health Leadership Award (2009), Sociedad Espanola de Psiquiatria's Miembro de Honor (2009), Simon Bolivar Award, APA (2010), Rafael Tavares Award, Association of Hispanic Mental Health Providers (2010), Honorary Professor at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru (2011), Stengel Award from the International Academy of Suicide Research (2013), Honorary Member of the Sociedad Colombiana de Psiquiatria Biologica (2014), Honorary Member of the Sociedad Española de Psiquiatria Biologica (2016) and the Virginia Kneeland Award for Distinguished Women in Medicine from Columbia University (2016).
Debate Session
High Risk vs. Population Approaches to Saving Lives
|John Mann
Columbia University
John Mann, M.D.
J. John Mann is The Paul Janssen Professor of Translational Neuroscience (in Psychiatry and in Radiology) at Columbia University and Director, Molecular Imaging and Neuropathology Division at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is a Past President of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the International Academy of Suicide Research and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
Dr. Mann received his medical degree from the University of Melbourne, and then completed his internship and residency at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He was trained in Psychiatry and Internal Medicine and has a Doctorate in Neurochemistry. His research employs functional brain imaging, neurochemistry and molecular genetics to probe the causes of depression and suicide. Dr. Mann has published over 600 peer-reviewed papers and edited 11 books on the subjects of the biology and treatment of mood disorders, suicidal behavior and other psychiatric disorders and has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1984. In private practice he specializes in the treatment of mood disorders and has been repeatedly named as America's and New York Best Doctors by Castle Connolly.
Dr. Mann has received numerous research and teaching awards, including the American Suicide Foundation Research Award, the American Association of Suicidology Louis I. Dublin Award, the New York State Office of Mental Health Research Award, the Klerman Senior Investigator Award from the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association, the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry Medical Student Teaching Award, the Stengel Award from the International Association for Suicide Prevention, the Morselli Medal from the International Academy of Suicide Research and the Mood Disorders Research Award from the American College of Psychiatrists.
Dr. Mann is an Honorary Professor of the University "Ss. Cyril and Methodius", Skopje, Macedonia and received a Visiting Professor Award from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.
|Eric Caine
University of Rochester
Eric Caine, M.D.
Based at the University of Rochester Medical Center since 1978, Eric D. Caine, M.D., has served as the Director of the CDC-funded Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention (ICRC-S) since its inception in 2012, and as Co-Director of the UR Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide (CSPS) since its founding in 1998. Early in his career, Dr. Caine spent nearly a decade working as an inpatient psychiatrist, with extensive experience in the evaluation, management, and aftercare of seriously ill psychiatric patients, including acutely suicidal individuals. From the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, he participated in more than 100 psychological autopsies, and he continues to review and consult on the care of complex clinical cases.
Under his direction, the Department of Psychiatry has developed an array of collaborative community clinical, research and training activities under the umbrella of "public health and preventive psychiatry." In this vein, he has focused for more than nearly two decades on public health and health system approaches to preventing suicide, suicide attempts, and risk-related adverse outcomes, in great measure by addressing "upstream" (aka, "distal") risk and protective factors. Dr. Caine was PI of a collaborative consensus process on public health approaches to suicide prevention, funded from 2001-05 by a coalition of NIMH, NIAAA, NIDA, NINR, NICHD, SAMSHA, and CDC, and was Program Director for a NIMH Research Education Grant (R25) from 2005-10 that supported the training and development of multiple graduate and post-graduate suicide researchers, as well as community partnership teams. Dr. Caine directed the NIMH/NIDA funded Center for Public Health and Population Interventions for Preventing Suicide (2004-2010), which spawned a wide variety of ongoing grants, as well as the VA VISN 2 Center of Excellence on Suicide Prevention. The ICRC-S, a center-without-walls that partners with the Education Development Center, Inc., seeks to merge injury prevention and mental health perspectives to forge new public health, community oriented approaches to preventing suicide, attempted suicide, and their antecedent risks. A central emphasis of the ICRC-S has been a focus on suicide prevention among men and women in the middle adult years of life. ICRC-S investigators now are collaborating with colleagues to support the Colorado National Collaborative, an effort to develop a set comprehensive, integrated community-health system approaches to the prevention of self-injury deaths, reaching from youth to elders.
Since 2001, Dr. Caine has led a series of NIH Fogarty International Center (FIC) training programs devoted to building a collaborative infrastructure and preparing early career Chinese researchers devoted to suicide research and public health-population approaches to prevention. These efforts now provide the foundation for the Asia-Pacific International Research and Education (ASPIRE) Network, involving participants from 11 countries, including China, Sub-Mekong nations, Philippines, Indonesia, and a diverse array of Asia-Pacific low income nations. New efforts have involved expanding health services research and training across the East Asia region, supported by a FIC R25 for "eC.ASPIRE," a training grant that focuses on social epidemiology (big data) and mHealth innovations.
Plenary Session
|Suicide Amoung Refugees- A Veil of Silence
|Lakshmi Vijayakumar
Voluntary Health Services
Lakshmi Vijayakumar, Ph.D., FRCPsych
Dr. Lakshmi Vijayakumar, consultant psychiatrist based in Chennai, India, is the Head, Department of Psychiatry in the Voluntary Health Services, a multi specialty hospital in Chennai and is the Founder of SNEHA, a pioneering suicide prevention organization in India.
She has been conferred "Honorary Fellowship" of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (FRCPsych), U.K. for her work on suicide prevention locally, nationally and globally. She is an Honorary Associate Professor of the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is also on the World Health Organization's International Network for Suicide Research and Prevention. She is the recipient of the Ringel Services Award in the year 2015 from the I.A.S.P. in recognition of her decades of work in the field of suicide prevention. Dr. Lakshmi Vijayakumar was one of the principal coordinators and editors of the W.H.O. World Suicide Report 2014.
She drafted the national framework for suicide prevention and had it included in the national mental health programme by the Ministry of Health, Government of India. Dr. Vijayakumar has served as the Vice President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (I.A.S.P.) for four years.
|The City That Disappears Every Year: Global Perspectives on Suicide
|Lena Verdeli
Columbia University
Lena Verdeli, Ph.D.
Lena Verdeli is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, and director of the Teachers College Global Mental Health lab. She received federal and foundation funding to study psychotherapy for prevention and treatment of mood disorders. In the past fifteen years Lena Verdeli has played a key role in landmark studies involving adaptation, training, and testing of psychotherapy packages used by non-specialists (primary care staff, community health workers, etc) with depressed adults in southern Uganda; war-affected adolescents in IDP camps in northern Uganda and depressed IDP women in Colombia; distressed patients in primary care in Goa, India; depressed community members in Haiti; and war-affected Syrian refugees in Lebanon, among others. She is a member of the Mental Health Advisory Committee for the Millennium Villages Project of the Earth Institute, a Scientific Advisory Council member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the Scientific Advisory Board of Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. She received the American Psychological Association International Psychology Division Mentoring Award and chaired the research workgroup of the Family NGO at the UN. She is currently a technical consultant with the WHO on global dissemination of psychosocial treatments.
Living Room Discussion: Lived Experience
|Jo Robinson
Orygen the National Centre of Excellence in Young Mental Health
Jo Robinson
Dr Jo Robinson is a Senior Research Fellow at Orygen the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health where she leads the suicide prevention research unit. Current projects include the development of a systematic approach to youth suicide prevention across north-west Melbourne, the establishment of a self-harm monitoring program in emergency departments, a RCT examining the effects of an online program among secondary school students, and a suite of studies examining the potential utility of social media platforms in suicide prevention. She has also led the production of a series of systematic reviews that have informed clinical practice and service development.
Her work also has a strong policy focus and she has led the development of two major reports and pieces of policy advice to government focusing on the prevention of suicide and self-harm in young people, and she recently led a consortium responsible for redeveloping the Suicide Prevention Strategy for Tasmania. She regularly provides advice to both state and federal government on issues relating to the prevention of suicide among young people.
|Steven Iselin
U.S. Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment
Steven R. Iselin
On Jan. 20, 2017, Mr. Iselin became Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment (EI&E). His responsibilities include oversight and policy for Navy and Marine Corps facilities sustainment, restoration and modernization; military construction; acquisition, utilization and disposal of real property and facilities; environmental protection, planning, restoration and natural resources conservation; and safety and occupational health. He previously served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (EI&E).
Mr. Iselin holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (1980) from the University of Notre Dame. Following graduation he was commissioned an Ensign in the U. S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps. While on active duty he served in a variety of increasingly responsible positions with the Naval Construction Force, NAVFAC and OPNAV staff. Mr. Iselin completed a successful 20-year Navy career in August 2000, retiring at the rank of Commander.
In 2000, Mr. Iselin joined the Plexus Scientific Corporation as the Facilities and Infrastructure Program Manager. He and his team helped improve facilities programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Smithsonian Institution by researching best practices in industry and establishing policy, training, and processes for planning, design, construction, and operation of their infrastructure assets.
Mr. Iselin joined the Civil Service in November 2002 as the first Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Anti-Terrorism and Force Protection Program Manager. He entered the Senior Executive Service in April 2004, serving as the NAVFAC Assistant Commander for Base Development. In January 2007, he was selected as the NAVFAC Chief Engineer, the Command's senior technical authority for all facilities engineering matters. Mr. Iselin went on to serve as the NAVFAC Executive Director in September 2007. While serving in the role as the senior civilian advisor to the NAVFAC Commander, he was responsible for leading all aspects of NAVFAC's business, and for the community management of more than 18,000 employees.
Mr. Iselin received a Master of Science in Management from the Naval Postgraduate School in December 1986. His civilian awards include the Secretary of the Navy's Distinguished Civilian Service Award (2012, 2014) and the Meritorious Presidential Rank Award (2008). He is a licensed professional engineer in Virginia and Wisconsin and a member of the Society of American Military Engineers.
As a volunteer Mr. Iselin served as the 1st Board Chair and helped establish the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). In this capacity he led chapter volunteers promoting AFSP's mission within the greater Washington D.C. area.
|Stephen O'Connor
University of Louisville
Stephen O'Connor
Stephen O'Connor is a Licensed Psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Louisville. He currently serves as the Associate Director for the University of Louisville Depression Center, Director of Faculty Research Development, and as Research Facilitator for the Robley Rex Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He received his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the Catholic University of America and completed his Clinical Internship and Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Washington. Dr. O'Connor's research focuses on improving the identification, assessment, and treatment of suicidal individuals in both traditional and non-traditional behavioral health settings. His current research on early intervention for suicide attempt survivors in trauma centers is funded by a Young Investigator Grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In addition to research, Dr. O'Connor provides individual and group psychotherapy to a wide range of individuals through the University of Louisville Physicians Psychiatry practice and provides clinical training to Psychiatry Residents and Psychology Doctoral students.
|Jessica Caudle
University of Texas at Arlington
Jessica Caudle
I am committed to opening the conversation about mental illness and suicide through the sharing of my own story. I have been an active participant and volunteer with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention since 2013. I found out about AFSP through a friend, she handed me a flier for the 2013 Out of the Darkness Community Walk and that seemingly simple gesture forever changed my life. The words "suicide prevention" took my breath away, I had spent the majority of my life struggling in silence.
I registered for that walk and questioned my sanity as I drove from Mansfield to Dallas that morning and even more so as I sat in my car upon arrival. I sat there watching people, so many people, walking toward the park wearing shirts with the names of their lost loved ones on them. I absolutely could not believe that so many lives had been affected by the very thing that tore our world apart years before. I lost my father to suicide on May 9, 1990 and faced my own personal struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, attempts, and my sexuality in the years that followed. It took twenty-three years for me to see that I wasn't alone.
I left that walk inspired and am still blown away by the events that followed. I wore my community walk t-shirt to Tarrant County Community College Southeast Campus, where I was a student, and had three people in ONE classroom ask me about my shirt and my affiliation with the foundation. I explained that I wasn't affiliated with AFSP, that I had just attended a walk and why. All three of those students opened up about their own personal stories of loss by suicide and survival. I couldn't believe it, we had been in class together for almost a full semester and up until that point we never really knew one another. A simple t-shirt changed that.
That conversation inspired me to do further research on AFSP and I found that the foundation hosts campus walks each spring. I went back to school and asked those students if they would be interested in helping bring the foundation to our campus for a campus walk. They agreed. We hosted a campus walk on April 19, 2014, over 200 people came to walk that day and we ended up raising over $6,000 for AFSP. We had faculty members take the stage to talk about their own personal loss and connection to the cause and it sparked a global conversation on campus. We just hosted our 4th campus walk at Tarrant County College and I am so thankful it has become an annual event.
I was asked to join the North Texas Chapter Board of Directors in 2015 and feel incredibly blessed to be a small part of this movement. I hope to inspire others to step out of their own comfort zones, their silence, and help them find their own voices. We can break the stigmas surrounding mental illness and suicide one conversation at a time.
I reside in Mansfield, TX with my amazing twelve year old son Jace. I work full-time as a Surgical Technologist at Harris Methodist hospital in Fort Worth, TX. I graduated from Tarrant County College's Surgical Technology program June 2015 and am currently working on my Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Invited Symposia Sessions
Military and Veteran Suicide
|Chair and Presenter
Follow up of Adolescent Suicide Attempters During Compulsory Military Service
|Alan Apter
Schneiders Children's Medical Center
of Israel
Alan Apter, M.D.
Prof. Alan Apter was born in South Africa and earned his medical degree at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He immigrated to Israel in 1969 and went on to earn his degree psychiatry at the Tel Aviv University. His residency was performed at the Geha Psychiatric Hospital in Petah Tikva and he continued his training at the Children's Hospital, National Medical Center, Washington, D.C, where he specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry; and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, where he specialized in biological psychiatry. Shortly after returning to Israel he was named director of the Child and Adolescent Department at the Geha Psychiatric Hospital.
Prof. Apter's academic positions include both professorship and chairmanship of the Department of Psychiatry at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, and he has been invited to serve as a visiting professor by the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Yale School of Medicine and the Columbia University Medical Center.
He is the winner of the University of Toronto's Farrington Award and Columbia University's Brickel Award. He was also awarded the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Distinguished Investigator Award, as well as the Excellence Award by the World Health Organization's Suicide Prevention Center.
Prof. Apter serves on the boards of several distinguished publications, including the Israel Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences, the Journal of Neural Transmission, the Archives of Suicide Research (contributing editor), the European Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology.
He serves on several state committees, including the Israel government's Interdepartmental Committee for Suicide Prevention of Adolescents, the Committee for Child Placement Laws at the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Health Ministry's Committee on the Licensing of Firearms for the Mentally Impaired, and the Defense Ministry's Suicide Prevention Committee. He also serves as a special advisor on suicide prevention to the Israel Defense Forces, and is an adviser for the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Illness in Sweden.
Prof. Apter has penned six book and more than 300 journal articles
|Crisis Response Planning to Prevent Suicidal Behavior Among Military Personnel
|Craig Bryan
National Center for Veterans Studies
Craig Bryan, PsyD, ABPP
Dr. Craig J. Bryan, PsyD, ABPP, is a board-certified clinical psychologist and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah. Dr. Bryan received his PsyD in clinical psychology Baylor University, and completed his clinical psychology residency at the Wilford Hall Medical Center, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. He served four years in the Air Force on active duty as the Chief of Primary Care Psychology Services and Suicide Prevention Program Manager at Lackland AFB, and deployed to Iraq in 2009 as the Clinical Director of the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic located at Joint Base Balad (LSA Anaconda), Iraq. Dr. Bryan currently researchers suicide, psychological health, and resiliency among military personnel and veterans, and oversees two randomized controlled trials totaling approximately $3M testing interventions for suicidal military personnel at Fort Carson, Colorado. He also serves as the lead risk management consultant for the $25 million STRONG STAR Research Consortium investigating treatments for combat-related PTSD among military personnel. Dr. Bryan is a nationally-recognized expert on military suicide, and serves as a consultant to the Department of Defense for psychological health promotion initiatives and suicide prevention. He regularly provides training to clinicians and medical professionals about managing suicidal patients, and has over 120 publications and scientific presentations in the areas of suicide and military mental health, including the book Managing Suicide Risk in Primary Care.
|2016 Expert Panel on Suicide Prevention in Canadian Armed Forces
|Jitender Sareen
University of Manitoba
Jitender Sareen, M.D., FRCPC
Dr. Sareen is the Medical Director for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) Mental Health Program and is the Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Sareen holds the rank of Professor of Psychiatry in the Departments of Psychiatry, Psychology and Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. He chairs the Research Committee and is a board member for the Canadian Psychiatric Association.
He has been supported by numerous national and local peer-reviewed grants in the areas of military mental health, indigenous suicide, and homelessness. Although his research interests are quite diverse, he is leading a large partnership grant with First Nations communities in Northwestern Manitoba to improve the understanding of suicide and suicide prevention measures (Swampy Cree Suicide Prevention Team). Dr. Sareen is also the Winnipeg Site Co-Principal Investigator for the Mental Health Commission of Canada's Research Demonstration Project in Homelessness and Mental Health (At Home / Chez Soi Study).
Dr. Sareen has published over 240 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of traumatic stress, anxiety disorders, indigenous suicide, psychiatric neuroimaging, and military mental health. Many of these publications have been in high impact journals including: JAMA, JAMA Psychiatry, and Psychological Medicine.
Dr. Sareen has received several awards for excellence in clinical research (Canadian Psychiatric Association, Canadian Institutes of Military and Veterans Health Research Forum and the Academy of Cognitive Therapy) and teaching (University of Manitoba).
|Two Promising Evidence-Based Interventions for Suicide Prevention Among Veterans With TBI
|Lisa Brenner
The University of Colorado, Rocky Mountain MIRECC
Lisa Brenner, Ph.D.
Lisa A. Brenner. Ph.D. is a Board Certified Rehabilitation Psychologist, and a Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) at the University of Colorado, Anschutz School of Medicine, and the Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC; http://www.mirecc.va.gov/visn19/). She is the Research Director for the Department of PM&R. Dr. Brenner is the President of Division 22 (Rehabilitation Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (APA) and an APA Fellow. She also serves as the Research Division Director for the American Association of Suicidology, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, and the International Brain Injury Association, 2017 World Congress President. Her primary area of research interest is traumatic brain injury, co-morbid psychiatric disorders, and negative psychiatric outcomes including suicide. Dr. Brenner has numerous peer-reviewed publications, participates on national advisory boards, and is currently co-authoring a book regarding neurodisability and suicide.
Community Based Suicide Prevention
|Chair and Presenter
Interventions to Limit Suicide by Self-Poisoning
|Keith Hawton
Warneford Hospital/Oxford University
United Kingdom
Keith Hawton, FRCPsych
Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Centre for Suicide Research at Oxford University. For more than thirty years he and his research group have been conducting investigations concerning the causes, treatment, prevention and outcome of suicidal behaviour. He has published more than 500 papers and chapters and 15 books. He has received the Stengel Research Award from the International Association for Suicide Prevention (1995), the Dublin Career Research Award from the American Association of Suicidology (2000), the Research Award of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (2002), a Life Achievement Award presented at the European Symposium of Suicide & Suicidal Behaviour (2012), the Morselli Medal from the International Association of Suicide Research, Montreal (2013) and the Finnish Psychiatric Association Medal (2014) He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
|Firearms and Suicide
|Matthew Miller
Northeastern University
|Intentional Pesticide Poisoning
|Melissa Pearson
University of Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Melissa Pearson, Ph.D.
Melissa Pearson is a qualified social worker with a doctorate in public health and social policy and is currently employed by the University of Edinburgh. She has led a range of studies based in Sri Lanka exploring suicide prevention. This includes studies since 2007 exploring the social and political context of suicide prevention and a large community trial of safe storage devices. This large Wellcome Trust-funded community cluster-randomized trial of a lockable device for safer storage of pesticides in 180 villages (more than 50,000 households and 200,000 individuals) in Sri Lanka. The intervention was developed to address the burden of suicide related to pesticide ingestion following promising work on pilot studies of lockable devices. Undertaking such a large-scale trial has been built on a strong partnership between local and international researchers, and also provincial health services. The trial has been faced with a number of challenges due to the scale and context of the study, including collection of data on the main outcome: intentional self-harm involving pesticides and also other methods and changing patterns of self-harm nationally.
Her current study is exploring the role of social capital and self-harm in the safe storage cohort. She co-chairs the Special Interest Group on Prevention of Intentional Pesticide Poisoning for the International Association of Suicide Prevention (https://www.iasp.info/prevention_of_intentional_pesticide_poisoning.php). Dr. Pearson's major research aim is to improve evidence available for policymaking in Sri Lanka and other lower and middle income countries in the region. She has a background in mental health and been involved in service improvement. She has an interest in the implementation of complex interventions and how to work with policymakers to embed change. Her research interests are in the broad contextual factors that influence communities and how we can develop evidence informed interventions to address complex social problems specifically focused on suicide and self-harm.
|Upstream Youth Suicide Prevention in Community Settings: Emerging Evidence
|Peter Wyman
University of Rochester
Peter Wyman, Ph.D.
Dr. Peter A. Wyman is Professor of Psychiatry, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, and Director of the School and Community-Based Prevention Program. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Department of Defense have funded his research to develop and test interventions aimed at preventing mental health and behavioral problems including suicidal behavior. The interventions he has developed use a network health diffusion approach that prepares members of a population as change and prevention agents to disseminate healthy norms and practices. He has led randomized controlled trials testing the Sources of Strength program within 60 schools with over 20,000 students, which is the largest youth suicide prevention trial to date. He is Principal Investigator of the DoD-funded Wingman-Connect project that is adapting Sources of Strength for the US Air Force training environment. Wyman participated in the Air Force Suicide Prevention Summit in 2015, was an expert panelist for the NIMH-National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention in 2013 and for the NIH Pathways to Preventing Youth Suicide (P2P) project in 2015-2016. He serves on the scientific advisory board of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In 2012 Wyman received the Excellence in Suicide Prevention Award from the Suicide Prevention Center of New York State and currently serves on the Suicide Prevention Council of New York State.
New Understanding of the Neurobiology of Suicide and Potential Causes
|Presenter and Chair
New Neurobiologic Imaging Findings Related to the Stress Diathesis Model of Suicidal Behavior
|John Mann
Columbia University
John Mann, M.D.
J. John Mann is The Paul Janssen Professor of Translational Neuroscience (in Psychiatry and in Radiology) at Columbia University and Director, Molecular Imaging and Neuropathology Division at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is a Past President of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the International Academy of Suicide Research and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
Dr. Mann received his medical degree from the University of Melbourne, and then completed his internship and residency at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He was trained in Psychiatry and Internal Medicine and has a Doctorate in Neurochemistry. His research employs functional brain imaging, neurochemistry and molecular genetics to probe the causes of depression and suicide. Dr. Mann has published over 600 peer-reviewed papers and edited 11 books on the subjects of the biology and treatment of mood disorders, suicidal behavior and other psychiatric disorders and has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1984. In private practice he specializes in the treatment of mood disorders and has been repeatedly named as America's and New York Best Doctors by Castle Connolly.
Dr. Mann has received numerous research and teaching awards, including the American Suicide Foundation Research Award, the American Association of Suicidology Louis I. Dublin Award, the New York State Office of Mental Health Research Award, the Klerman Senior Investigator Award from the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association, the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry Medical Student Teaching Award, the Stengel Award from the International Association for Suicide Prevention, the Morselli Medal from the International Academy of Suicide Research and the Mood Disorders Research Award from the American College of Psychiatrists.
Dr. Mann is an Honorary Professor of the University "Ss. Cyril and Methodius", Skopje, Macedonia and received a Visiting Professor Award from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.
|Suicide and the Connectome
|Kees van Heeringen
Ghent University
Kees Van Heeringen, M.D., Ph.D.
Kees van Heeringen, MD PhD, is a full professor of psychiatry at the University of Ghent. He is the chair of the Division of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Director of the Unit for Suicide Research at the University of Ghent, and founding boardmember of the Flemish Expertise Center for Suicide Prevention (VLESP). He is a fellow at the International Academy for Suicide Research and a member of advisory boards, working groups and associations related to suicide research and prevention. He has published more than 150 scientific papers and 8 books. His research covers three areas in suicidology: epidemiology (e.g. monitoring of attempted suicide, survey studies), neurobiology (e.g. neuropsychology and neuroimaging) and prevention (development and testing of preventive interventions).
|Inflammation and Suicidal Behavior
|Lena Brundin
Van Andel Research Institute
Lena Brundin, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Lena Brundin earned her Ph.D. in neurobiology and her M.D. from Lund University, Sweden, where she specialized in clinical psychiatry and later attained the rank of associate professor. In 2012, she joined Van Andel Research Institute and Michigan State University College of Human Medicine in Grand Rapids, Mich. She is currently an associate professor in the Institute's Center for Neurodegenerative Science.
Dr. Brundin's research spans basic and clinical research, and focuses on the role of inflammatory mediators in psychiatric conditions, particularly the effects of the kynurenine metabolic pathway in mood disorders. Her studies were among the first to indicate a role for inflammatory cytokines in suicidality, a finding that one day may help develop biomarkers for depression and suicide risk. She is currently the principal investigator on an R01-funded clinical trial that investigates the role of the kynurenine pathway in perinatal depression.
|Metabolomics and Suicidal Behavior
|Lisa Pan
University of Pittsburgh
Neurobiology of Suicide: Genetics
|Presenter and Chair
Genome Wide Association Studies on Impulsivity and Aggression
|Dan Rujescu
University of Halle
Dan Rujescu, Ph.D.
Prof. Dr. Dan Rujescu, is Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics of the University of Halle, Germany. He received his medical degree from the Universities Heidelberg and Essen. From 1993-1995 he worked as a physician at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Mainz. Afterwards, he moved to the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Munich where he became Head of the Division of Molecular and Clinical Neurobiology. During his time in Munich he became a senior physician, a medical specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy, a full Professor for Psychiatry, Head of the Alzheimer Memorial Center, as well as Deputy Head of the Department.
He can refer to an extensive list of publications comprising more than 350 original papers. Most of his research is funded through national and especially international third-party funding including eight EU funded projects, three genome-wide genotyping initiatives of the Wellcome Trust (WTCCC), one DFG priority program, one project of the Bavarian Research Foundation, two R01 projects of the National Institutes of Health and one BMBF project within the National Genome Research Network.
Dan Rujescu is member of several national and international scientific societies. Within the World Society of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) he is head of the "Genetics" task force, furthermore, within the Collogium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum (CINP) he is councilor and chair of the "Ethics committee". Additioanlly, Dan Rujescu is head of the "Genetics of Suicide and Neurobiology" task force of the International Association for Suicidal Prevention (IASP) and fellow of the International Academy of Suicide Research (IASR).
Based on his previous research he has been awarded the following prizes: in 2006 the NARSAD Independent Investigator Award (William & Gloria Paul Family Foundation), in 2007 the Kraepelin Research Award, in 2008 the Dr. Paul Janssen Schizophrenia Research Award, in 2008 the Kraepelin-Alzheimer medal, and in 2010 the European BMS Prevention Award in Psychiatry.
Dan Rujescu is mostly involved in the research of genetic factors and biomarkers of psychiatric diseases. The Department is involved in extensive academic and industrial national and international genome and post-genome efforts (e.g. genome wide association studies, next generation sequencing etc.). The major focus of his research is on a multidimensional translational approach to neuropsychiatric diseases and behavioral phenotypes at genetic, molecular, cellular, structural, functional, cognitive and behavioural levels. The group is recruiting and characterizing one of the largest groups of psychiatric patients and controls with intermediate phenotypes.
|Epigenetics and Suicidal Behavior
|Gustavo Turecki
McGill University
Gustavo Turecki, M.D., Ph.D.
Gustavo Turecki MD PhD is a clinician scientist whose work focuses on understanding brain molecular changes that occur in major depression and molecular processes that explain treatment response. In addition, his work aims to elucidate the neurobiological basis of the suicidal brain. Dr. Turecki is Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University. He is the Director of the McGill Group for Suicide Studies, a world-leading multidisciplinary suicide research group (www.mgss.ca), the co-director of the Douglas Bell-Canada Brain Bank (www.douglasbrainbank.ca), and the director of the FRQS Réseau québécois sur le suicide, les troubles de l'humeur et les troubles associés (www.reseausuicide.qc.ca).
Dr. Turecki has conducted pioneering research which has led to our understanding of how traumatic life experiences impacts brain gene function and increases long-term risk for suicide by epigenetically regulating critical genes involved in stress responses and behavioral development. He has authored over 350 publications, including research articles in leading peer-reviewed journals such as Nature Neuroscience, Nature Medicine, and Lancet. His work has been cited over 20,000 times and his contributions to the field have been recognized through 28 awards, most recently the ACNP 2015 Joel Elkes and the NARSAD 2016 Distinguished Investigator Award. He also serves, or has served, in the advisory boards of several scientific journals, and international scientific institutes, and has recently been appointed as Chair of the newly created CIHR advisory board on Research Excellence, Policy and Ethics.
Dr. Turecki is also an engaged clinician and heads the Depressive Disorders Program at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, where he treats patients with refractory major depressive disorder.
|From DNA Microarrays to Micro RNAs in Suicide Research
|Gil Zalsman
Geha Mental Health Center, Tel Aviv University
Gil Zalsman, M.D.
Prof. Zalsman graduated from the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel. He completed his psychiatry residency at the Geha Mental Health Center and Tel Aviv University and the Child Psychiatry residency at Geha and Yale Child Study Center in Yale University, Connecticut, USA with the late Prof. Donald J Cohen. He completed a two years Post-Doctoral Fellowship with Prof. J John Mann, in the Division of Molecular Imaging and Neuropathology, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York City, USA, where he holds an ongoing position as an Associate Research Scientist. He also holds a Master degree in health administration (MHA. summa cum laude) from Ben Gurion University, Israel. His academic research focuses on gene-environment interactions in childhood depression and suicidal behavior and other psychiatric disorders in adolescence.
Prof. Zalsman has published more than a 200 papers, of them more than 100 original papers, dozens of reviews, book chapters, two edited books and actively participated in more than a 200 scientific meetings. Currently he is the CEO and Medical Director of Geha Mental Health Center near Tel Aviv in addition to being the director of the Adolescent Day Unit. He is a Full Professor in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry at Sackler School of Medicine and former director of psychiatry continuing education program.
Prof. Zalsman is the past board member and president of the child psychiatry section at the Association of European Psychiatry (EPA). Currently he a counselor and chair of education at the executive committee of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) and the president of the Israeli Society of Biological Psychiatry (ISBP). He served as the deputy editor of the Israel Journal of Psychiatry and recently chaired the 14th European Symposium for Suicide and Suicidal Behavior (ESSSB), held in Tel Aviv.
He is married with two children and resides in Tel Aviv suburb, Israel.
|Genetics of Impulsivity, Aggression, and Suicide
|Enrique Baca-Garcia
Fundacion Jimenez Diaz
Enrique Baca-Garcia, M.D., Ph.D.
As Chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Fundación Jiménez Díaz, Dr. Enrique Baca-Garcia, M.D.Ph.D., oversees psychiatric services for a population of about one million in Madrid, Spain.
He trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the Psychiatry Department at Columbia University (New York), where he currently is Adjunct Associate Professor.
He is one of the leading experts in the world in suicidal behaviour, and he has authored over 200 peer reviewed publications. He was also the first Spaniard ever to be awarded a NARSAD grant.
Dr. Baca-Garcia is a passionate and prolific mentor who has been thesis advisor for over 35 PhD students. He has made major contributions through mentorship of young scientists who have become leaders in the field, often fostering lasting international collaborations with his mentees.
Interventions to Prevent Child and Adolescent Suicide
|Chair and Presenter
Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM): Challenges in the Design and Evaluation of Universal Suicide Prevention Programs for Adolescents
|Danuta Wasserman
Karolinska Institute
Danuta Wasserman, M.D., Ph.D.
Danuta Wasserman (DW) is a Univ. Prof. Dr. Med. in Psychiatry and Suicidology at Karolinska Institutet (KI), and the current Director and Founding Head of the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Ill-Health (NASP) at KI, and has held these positions since 1993. DW has been the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research, Methods Development and Training in Suicide Prevention since 1995 and assists in the development of suicide preventive research and suicide preventive programs on five continents. She is the former President of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) and the International Academy of Suicide Research (IASR). She has served on the Board of the EPA since 2008. Additionally DW served for several years as the Chair of the Suicidology Sections at the EPA and World Psychiatric Association (WPA). Presently, she is the chair of the Suicide Research Network at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP). Professor Wasserman is the Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, Honorary Member of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association and Honorary President of Estonian-Swedish Mental Health Institutet.
DW has won numerous national and international honours and awards, including the Public Health Prize from the Nordic Council of Ministers of Health for the outstanding contribution to public mental health research and prevention, the Distinguished Research Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Research (AFSP), the Hans Rost Prize from the German Association for Suicide Prevention for the outstanding contribution to suicide research and prevention, the Stengel Research Award for outstanding contributions in the field of suicide research and prevention from the International Association for Suicide Prevention and Crisis Intervention (IASP), and from the British Medical Association (BMC) Board of Science Award for the Public Understanding of Science for her book Depression: the facts published by Oxford University Press. DW is the author of numerous scientific articles, reports and book chapters. She is the editor of the Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention: A Global Perspective, published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Her comprehensive book for busy clinicians and the broad audience interested in suicide prevention "Suicide an unnecessary death" published by Martin Dunitz (2001), has been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Russian and was updated in a new edition by the Oxford University Press (2016).
DW's research activities comprise epidemiological, psychodynamic and genetic studies of suicidal behaviours. In 2009, she received the honour from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, to organize the "Nobel Conference on the role of genetics in promoting suicide prevention and the mental health of the population." Summary of the whole conference was published in a special issue of European Psychiatry, 2010;25(5):249-310. She was responsible for organizing several national and international congresses in psychiatry and suicidology.
DW is the Principle Investigator for two large-scale European randomized controlled trials (RCT), "Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE)" and "Working in Europe to Stop Truancy Among Youth (WE-STAY)," assessing the effectiveness of different intervention approaches and prevention strategies for adolescents. Both RCTs are funded with €3 million each by the European Union (EU). DW leads also a large RCT in Sweden involving 163 schools, with the aim to test the effectiveness of the mental health promoting, Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) program in comparison to a control group. She serves as a consultant to the mental health promotion and suicide preventive studies among youth to several universities in Europe, Latin America, and to Montana State University, Texas University and Columbia University in the United States. She is the Swedish site-coordinator of the NEVERMIND project (NEurobehavioral predictiVE and peRsonalized Modeling of depressIve symptoms duriNg primary somatic Disorders through ICT-enabled, self-management procedures), funded by the EU in the Horizon 2020 framework program.
Since 2000, she has served as the Principle Investigator for the Genetic Investigation of Suicide and Attempted Suicide Project (GISS project), funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Research Foundation in Sweden. Professor Wasserman is also the chair and a member of several working groups on mental health promotion and suicide prevention.
|As Safe as Possible (ASAP): A Brief Inpatient Intervention Supported by a Phone App to Prevent Recurrent Suicidal Behavior in Adolescents
|David Brent
UPMC/Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic
David Brent, M.D.
Dr. Brent is currently Academic Chief, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic and Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Epidemiology & Clinical Translational Science, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and holds an endowed chair in Suicide Studies. He co-founded and now directs Services for Teens at Risk (STAR), a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania-funded program for suicide prevention, education of professionals, and the treatment of at-risk youth and their families.
Dr. Brent is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has been recognized for his research by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and received the Ruane Prize for research in child psychiatry from NARSAD.
His work has focused on the identification of risk factors for adolescent depression and suicidal behavior, and on the translation of those findings into clinical interventions. Along with many other colleagues, Dr. Brent helped to establish the role of cognitive therapy as a treatment for depressed adolescents and developed guidelines for the management of treatment resistant depression. Dr. Brent and colleagues have endeavored to understand possible intermediate phenotypes for suicidal behavior and mechanisms by which suicidal behavior is transmitted from parent to child.
|DBT in Suicidal and Self-Harming Adolescents
|Lars Mehlum
National Centre of Suicide Research and Prevention, University of Oslo
Lars Mehlum, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor Lars Mehlum MD PhD is the founding director of the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at the Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway. A psychiatrist and psychotherapist he is a past president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), the current president of the European Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ESSPD) and the president-elect of the International Academy of Suicide Research (IASR). He was a visiting professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons 2011-2012 and has lectured widely in many countries. He has established several advanced training programmes, such as a Master's program in suicide prevention at the University of Oslo and national therapist training programs in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Complicated Grief Treatment (CGT). The founding editor of the journal Suicidologi published since 1996 he is also a member of the editorial board of several international journals. With his research group he focuses on the clinical course of suicidal and self-harming behaviors with respect to etiological and prognostic factors such as stressors and negative life events, personality traits and disorders, major psychiatric illness and the efficacy of interventions. He has conducted studies of the epidemiology of self harm and completed suicide in the general population and various non-clinical populations and published widely on these subjects and received several national and international awards.
|Implementing Zero Suicide Strategies for Youth: Are We Ready?
|Joan Asarnow
Semel Institute- UCLA
Joan Asarnow, Ph.D.
Dr. Joan Asarnow is a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Youth Stress and Mood Program, a depression and suicide prevention program with clinical, educational, and research components. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Waterloo where she studied with Dr. Donald Meichenbaum one of the founding fathers of cognitive-behavior therapy, and completed an NIMH post-doctoral fellowship prior to assuming her faculty position at UCLA.
As President of the Society for Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology (American Psychological Association, Division 53), she developed and led a national initiative on enhancing health and behavioral health care systems and improving care for children and families and forged collaborative work with the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other organizations dedicated to the health and well-being of children and adolescents.
Dr. Asarnow has led efforts to develop and disseminate evidence-based treatments for youth suicide and suicide attempt prevention and depression. She is currently leading a large randomized controlled trial , with Dr. Greg Clarke of Kaiser Permanente Research Foundation, evaluating a stepped care intervention for adolescents and young adults aimed at advancing the goal of zero suicide within a large health system. Dr. Asarnow also directs the UCLA-Duke SAMHSA-funded Center for Trauma-Informed Adolescent Suicide, Self-Harm & Substance Abuse Prevention, with co-director Dr. David Goldston. Two programs developed by Dr. Asarnow are listed in the National Registry for Evidence-Based Programs (SAMHSA): 1) the Family Intervention for Suicide Prevention, a crisis treatment for youths after a suicidal/self-harm episode; and 2) Depression Treatment Quality Improvement, an evidence-based depression treatment program that has been integrated within primary care, mental health, and other settings. Dr. Asarnow has received grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and other organizations.
Media, Social Media, and Suicide
|Chair and Presenter
Social Media and Suicidal Behaviors in Adolescents
|Merike Sisask
Tallinn University
Merike Sisask
Merike Sisask is Professor in Public Health at the Tallinn University, School of Governance, Law and Society (SOGOLAS), Management Board Member and Senior Researcher at the Estonian-Swedish Mental Health and Suicidology Institute (ERSI), and Management Board Member at the Nõmme Health Clinic. She has educational background in law (1991, University of Tartu), psychological counselling (2003, the Private School of Psychology), public health (MSc in 2005, University of Tartu, Institute of Public Health) and sociology (PhD in 2011, Tallinn University, Institute of International and Social Studies).
Merike Sisask has been involved in several global and European intervention projects on suicide prevention and mental health promotion (WHO SUPRE-MISS, FP7 WE-STAY, FP7 OSPI-Europe, FP7 SEYLE, EAAD, MHPHands, SUPREME, PREDI-NU etc). She has authorship in numerous high-level scientific publications (including 43 articles indexed by Web of Science, h-index 15) and in several articles and resources in Estonian language.
Merike Sisask is a member of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), the Country Representative of Estonia since 2015, she belongs to the Task Force on Suicide and the Media and Special Interest Group on Suicidal Behaviour in Adolescents. She is also a member of the International Academy of Suicide Research (IASR), a member of the Section of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention, European Psychiatric Association (EPA), and a member of the Section of Military Psychiatry, World Psychiatric Association (WPA). CV with full track record is available HERE.
In the field of suicidology she is particularly interested in public health perspective, psychological and social factors of suicidal behaviours (incl media), and psycho-social programmes and e-solutions for suicide prevention and mental health promotion.
|Suicide and the Internet
|Jane Pirkis
University of Melbourne
Jane Pirkis, Ph.D.
Professor Jane Pirkis is the Director of the Centre for Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and holds a National Health and Medica Research Council Senior Research Fellowship. She is also the General Secretary of the International Association for Suicide Prevention. She has worked in the suicide prevention field for 20 years, and is well known for her work on suicide and traditional and newer media. Recently, she has undertaken a number of projects looking at ways of harnessing the media to achieve positive results in suicide prevention. Jane's research achievements have been recognised by a number of awards, including the Commonwealth Fund's 2001 Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Suicide Prevention Australia's 2010 Lifetime Research Award.
|Media and Suicide: Building the Evidence Base
|Thomas Niederkrotenthaler
Medical University of Vienna
Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, M.D., Ph.D., MMS
Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, MD, PhD, MMS, is Associate Professor at the Suicide Research Unit of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. He is currently co-chair of IASP's Media & Suicide SIG (https://www.iasp.info/suicide_and_the_media.php), and his main research focus is in the area of harmful and protective media effects on suicidality.
|Engaging Vulnerable Youth by Activating Their Social Media Networks
|Qijin Cheng
The Hong Kong Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research
Hong Kong
Qijin Cheng
Dr. Cheng specialises in media studies and mental health promotion. She was a culture journalist and later pursued her PhD degree focusing on suicide and the media in the Chinese context. Her current research interests include media/social media effects on suicide and mental health, suicide communication, and social determinants of mental well-being. She is a member of the Media Task Force of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP). At the Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention, HKU, she is responsible for media engagement and utilising new media technologies for suicide prevention and research.
Populations and System Based Approaches to Suicide Prevention
|Chair and Presenter
Population Based and Selected Interventions for Preventing Suicide Across the Care Pathway
|Nav Kapur
University of Manchester
United Kingdom
Nav Kapur, FRCPsych, M.D.
Nav is Professor of Psychiatry and Population Health at the University of Manchester, UK, and an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. He is Head of Research at the Centre for Suicide Prevention in the University of Manchester and leads the suicide work programme of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide which collects data on all suicide deaths among people in contact with health services in the UK. He was Chair of the Guideline Development Group for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) self-harm guidelines (longer term management) and also chaired the Quality Standards for self-harm. He is currently chairing the NICE guidelines for depression in adults and is topic expert on the NICE guidelines for suicide prevention in the community. He is a member of the Department of Health's (England) National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group. He has published extensively on suicide and self-harm with much of his research focussing on how health services might best contribute to suicide prevention.
|Research Supporting Suicide Prevention Approaches in Health Systems
|Brian Ahmedani
Henry Ford Health System
Brian Ahmedani, Ph.D.
Dr. Brian Ahmedani is Director of Psychiatry Research in Behavioral Health Services and a Research Scientist in the Center for Health Policy and Health Services Research at Henry Ford Health System. He is a licensed clinical therapist with PhD and Master's degrees in Social Work from Michigan State University as well as NIH-supported fellowship training in Drug Dependence Epidemiology. His main research interests are in the areas of health services and interventions for individuals with mental health and alcohol/drug use conditions as well as a particular emphasis on suicide prevention. Dr. Ahmedani has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on several projects in these areas, including current leadership of a multi-site project examining variations in patterns of care before suicide as well as the Trans-America Consortium of the HCSRN - one of the healthcare provider organizations of the NIH's All of Us Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program. Dr. Ahmedani has also worked to evaluate the Henry Ford Perfect Depression Care Initiative and is an advisory group member for the national Zero Suicide initiative
|Systems Thinking in Collaborative, Community-Based Suicide Prevention: Bridging the Gap Between Communities of Research and Practice
|Ann Marie White
University of Rochester
Ann Marie White, Ed.D.
Dr. White is Director of the Office of Mental Health Promotion (OMHP) and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, with secondary appointments in Public Health Sciences and Community Health. She leads department-level change initiatives to deepen Psychiatry's community engagement via service, education and research. OMHP oversees community, consumer and diversity affairs for Psychiatry faculty and staff. Dr. White directs local and national training activities in collaborative research to infuse scientific inquiries with mental health-related policy and program activities of communities. She promotes mental health supporting behaviors, services utilization and mental illness prevention strategies within community-based settings. For instance, she developed participatory research with volunteer "natural helpers" seeking to strengthen urban neighborhoods' violence prevention activities. She conducts multimedia community-based education to develop civic engagement among youth and young adults. Her research interests focus on integrating systems and participatory research approaches with data science methods to help communities generate novel actionable prevention approaches to complex behavioral health issues. Her 10+ years of research experiences in developmental psychology emphasized the role of community settings such as childcare, arts centers and after-school programs in the development of children and adolescents. Upon completion of her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard's Graduate School of Education, she was a AAAS/SRCD fellow in the U.S. Senate and the National Institutes of Health. She currently is a visiting scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is faculty in its funded Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention.
|Systematic Suicide Care: Evidence for Zero Suicide
|Mike Hogan
Hogan Health Systems
Michael Hogan, Ph.D.
Dr. Michael Hogan served as New York State Commissioner of Mental Health from 2007-2012, and now operates a consulting practice in health and behavioral health care. The NYS Office of Mental Health operated 23 accredited psychiatric hospitals, and oversaw New York's $5B public mental health system serving 650,000 individuals annually. Previously Dr. Hogan served as Director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health (1991-2007) and Commissioner of the Connecticut DMH from 1987-1991. He chaired the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in 2002-2003. He served as the first behavioral health representative on the board of The Joint Commission (2007-2015) and chaired its Standards and Survey Procedures Committee. He has served as a member of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention since it was created in 2010, co-chairing task forces on clinical care and interventions and crisis care.. He is a member of the NIMH National Mental Health Advisory Council. Previously, he served on the NIMH Council (1994-1998), as President of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (2003-2005) and as Board President of NASMHPD's Research Institute (1989-2000). His awards for national leadership include recognition by the National Governor's Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Campaign for Mental Health Reform, the American College of Mental Health Administration and the American Psychiatric Association. He is a graduate of Cornell University, and earned a MS degree from the State University College in Brockport NY, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University.
Suicide in Older Adults- From Prevention to Postvention
|Chair and Presenter
Integrated Care Management of Late Life Depression in Chinese Primary Care Clinics
|Yeates Conwell
University of Rochester
Yeates Conwell, M.D.
Yeates Conwell, M.D. is Professor of and Vice Chair of Psychiatry, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where he is Director of the UR Medical Center's Office for Aging Research and Health Services and Co-Director of the UR Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide. Immediate Past President and Chair of the Scientific Council of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Dr. Conwell received his medical training at the University of Cincinnati, and completed his Psychiatry Residency and a Fellowship in Geriatric Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. In addition to teaching, clinical care, and service system development, Dr. Conwell directs an inter-disciplinary program of research in aging, mental health services, and suicide prevention.
|Older Adults Bereaved by Spousal Suicide: A Nationwide Study
|Annette Erlangsen
Mental Health Center Copenhagen
Annette Erlangsen, Ph.D.
Annette Erlangsen PhD is an Associate Professor and Leader of Danish Research Institute for Suicide Prevention at the Research Unit of Mental Health Centre Copenhagen, Denmark. She holds an Adjunct Associate Professorship at the Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the USA and at the Department of Regional Health Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Dr. Erlangsen is the Secretary – Treasurer for the International Academy of Suicide Research. She acts as the national representative for Denmark as well as co-chair of the Special Interested Group on Suicide in Older Adults for the International Association of Suicide Prevention. She is Board Member of the Danish Volunteer Organization for Survivors of Suicide, Nefos. In addition, she is member of the Editorial Board of Lancet Psychiatry, Crisis, and Suicidology Online. In 2003, she received the Young Lecturer Award at the European Symposium for Suicide and Suicidal Behaviour and in 2014 she was awarded the Alexander Gralnick Award from the American Association of Suicidology.
Dr. Erlangsen's research interests include suicide in older adults, bereaved by suicide, affected by suicide attempt, and psychosocial interventions for people at risk of suicide as well as research applied to record linkage data. She has published numerous papers in peer reviewed journals as well as book chapters and editorials.
|Preventing Suicide in Later Life by Promoting Social Connectedness
|Kim Van Orden
University of Rochester
Kim Van Orden, Ph.D.
Kim Van Orden, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. She received her PhD from Florida State University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Rochester where she began specializing in geropsychology. Her research and clinical interests are in the promotion of social connectedness to prevent late-life suicide. She has published extensively on the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide, which she helped co-develop, refine, and test. She has published over 50 peer reviewed publications, most of which are focused on the role of social connectedness in mental health and suicide risk. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her current and recent projects examine behavioral interventions to reduce suicide risk in older adults via the mechanism of increasing social connectedness. These interventions include psychotherapy, peer companionship, and computer-based social skills training; an upcoming study will test volunteering as a means of reducing loneliness. Kim is also involved in clinical practice with older adults by providing supervision and consultation to therapists in evidence-based psychotherapies for older adults, including problem-solving therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, and cognitive therapy.
|Risk Factors of Completed Suicide Among Chinese Rural Elderly: A Paired Case-Control Psychological Autopsy Study
|Liang Zhou
Guangzhou Brain Hospital
Liang Zhou, M.D.
Liang Zhou MD is a professor of psychiatry at the Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China. After got his MD at Central South University at 2003, he had worked at the School of Public Health, Central South University from 2003 to 2016. Now he is the vice dean of School of Mental Health at Guangzhou Medical University. The main research interests of Dr. Zhou include suicide prevention and research in rural older adults in China, alcohol use problems, and community mental health. He has published over 40 papers and 10 books and chapters in both English and Chinese.
Psychosocial Interventions to Prevent Suicide
|Chair and Presenter
Cognitive Therapy for Suicide Prevention
|Gregory Brown
Perelman School of Medicine
Gregory Brown, Ph.D.
Dr. Gregory K. Brown is a Research Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania and a VISN 4 MIRECC Investigator and Clinical Psychologist at the Corporal Michael J Crescenz VA Medical Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the Director of the Center for the Prevention of Suicide at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Brown is one of the nation's leading scholars in suicide prevention. His research aims to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of innovative, targeted interventions designed to reduce vulnerability factors associated with suicide behavior and depression in high risk populations and to examine the implementation of evidence-based treatments into "real world" settings to prevent suicide. Dr. Brown is the co-developer of the Safety Plan Intervention, along with Dr. Barbara Stanley, that is widely used in research and clinical settings. He is the co-developer of the Cognitive Therapy for Suicide Prevention intervention, a brief evidence-based, psychotherapy intervention which has been shown to prevent suicide attempts. He has been the Principle Investigator or Co-Investigator of numerous effectiveness and implementation trials that evaluate their use in a variety of health care settings.
|Safety Planning and Other Brief Interventions: Outcomes and Challenges
|Barbara Stanley
Columbia University
|The Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS): Adaptations of the Approach
|David Jobes
The Catholic University of America
David Jobes, Ph.D., ABPP
David A. Jobes, Ph.D., ABPP, is a Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of Clinical Training at The Catholic University of America; he is an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He has published six books and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Jobes is a past President of the American Association of Suicidology (AAS) and he is the recipient of various awards for his scientific work including the 1995 AAS "Shneidman Award" (early career contribution to suicidology), the 2012 AAS "Dublin Award" (for career contributions in suicidology), and the 2016 AAS "Linehan Award" (for suicide treatment research). He has been a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the FBI, the Department of Defense, and Veterans Affairs. Dr. Jobes is member of the Scientific Council and the Public Policy Council of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and is Board certified in clinical psychology (American Board of Professional Psychology). Dr. Jobes maintains a private clinical, consulting, and forensic practice in Washington DC.
|Preliminary Outcomes of Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT-A) for Depressed Youth Engaging in Suicidal Behavior (IPT-A-CSP)
|Anat Klomek-Brunstein
Columbia University
Anat Brunstein Klomek, Ph.D.
Dr. Klomek is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel. Dr. Klomek is a clinical psychologist and a Cognitive Behavioral (CBT) and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT-A) supervisor. Dr. Klomek received her Ph.D. in Child Clinical Psychology from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and completed her post-doctoral fellowship at the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University in New York. Dr. Klomek's research interests focus on child and adolescent mental health including depression, suicide, bullying and cyberbullying. Dr. Klomek has been involved in various intervention studies and has written numerous articles about these topics. Since 2007, Dr. Klomek is the assistant editor of Archives of Suicide Research.
Using Large and Complex Data in Suicide Research
|Chair and Presenter
|Vincent Silenzio
University of Rochester
|Linking Prediction and Prevention in Large Healthcare Systems
|Gregory Simon
Group Health Research Institute
Gregory Simon, M.D., Ph.D.
Gregory Simon MD MPH is an investigator at Group Health Research Institute and a psychiatrist in Group Health's Behavioral Health Service. He is also a Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington and Co-chair of the national scientific advisory board of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. Dr. Simon completed residency training in internal medicine at the University of Washington, residency training in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and fellowship training in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program at the University of Washington. Dr. Simon's research focuses on improving access to and quality of mental health care, especially for mood disorders. Specific areas of research include improving adherence to medication, increasing the availability of effective psychotherapy, evaluating peer support by and for people with mood disorders, identifying and reducing risk of suicidal behavior, cost-effectiveness of treatment, and comorbidity of mood disorders with chronic medical conditions. Dr. Simon currently leads the Mental Health Research Network, an NIMH-funded cooperative agreement supporting population-based mental health research across 13 large health systems.
|Deliberate Self-Harm and Follow-Up Intervention: Insights From Routine Practice
|Ping Qin
University of Oslo
Ping Qin, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr Ping Qin is professor at National Center for Suicide Research and Prevention, University of Oslo in Norway, and leader of research group for register-based study on suicide and deliberate self-harm at UiO. Her main focus of research for the past 20 years has been into quantitative investigation on the contextual effect of multifactorial exposures on risk for suicidal behavior. She has led and published a range of large-scale studies on suicidal behavior in the context of socio-economic disadvantages, physical and psychiatric illnesses, life stresses as well as biological and genetic vulnerabilities. Professor Qin volunteers her time extensively. She is Associate Editor of Suicidologi and in editorial boards of several international journals, and assesses manuscripts for more than 60 academic journals.
|Modeling Short-Term Changes in Suicidal Ideation and Behavior: The Challenges and the Promise in the Analysis of High-Frequency Data
|Hanga Gafalvy
Columbia University
Hanga Galfalvy, Ph.D.
Dr. Hanga Galfalvy received a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her transition into the area of psychiatric research was funded by an NIMH K25 award for developing statistical methodology for predicting suicide and suicide attempt based on multidimensional data. Currently she has a joint appointment in the Department of Biostatistics and the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University, and fifteen years of research experience in psychiatric statistics. Dr. Galfalvy's methodological research interests focus on statistical methods for analyzing psychiatric data, including building and evaluating prediction models for suicide/attempt, analysis of multidimensional longitudinally measured data, and statistical genetics. She has collaborated throughout her career with established psychiatric investigators and research groups, both nationally and internationally, as a co-investigator or statistician on projects funded by NIMH, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the New York State Office of Mental Health, the U. S. Department of Veteran Affairs, and SAMHSA.
Novel Approaches to Understanding and Preventing Suicide
|Chair and Presenter
Ketamine in Suicide Prevention
|Michael Grunebaum
Columbia University
Michael Grunebaum, M.D.
Dr. Grunebaum received his MD in 1991 from Harvard Medical School, did his psychiatry residency at Cornell-Payne Whitney Clinic, and then the Public Psychiatry Fellowship at Columbia-New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) after which he worked for several years as a psychiatrist (on the Columbia faculty) in homeless shelters and supported housing facilities in New York City. Since joining the clinical research division headed by John Mann at NYSPI in 2000, he has developed a research career in antidepressant clinical trials in depressed patients at higher suicidal risk. He received a 2004 NARSAD Young investigator award to initiate a randomized, double-blind, antidepressant clinical trial in suicide ideators and attempters with unipolar depression. He received a patient-oriented K23 award to complete this RCT, the main results of which were published in 2011 in Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2012 he was awarded a 5-year NIMH-funded R01 grant to conduct an RCT of sub-anesthetic ketamine vs. midazolam infusion for unipolar depressed patients with clinically significant suicidal ideation (NCT01700829) which recently completed recruitment and is in the data analysis phase. In 2013 he was awarded a NARSAD Independent Investigator Grant to conduct a similar pilot trial in bipolar depression with clinically significant suicidal ideation (NCT01944293) the results of which were recently accepted for publication in Bipolar Disorders. Dr. Grunebaum has more than 60 peer-reviewed publications. His non-clinical trial related publications have explored clinical phenomenology and pharmaco-epidemiology of suicidal ideation/behavior as well as protective factors such as social adjustment and attachment. In addition to full-time clinical research, Dr. Grunebaum participates on NIMH and VA grant review panels, is a journal reviewer, teaches as a psychopharmacology supervisor in the Columbia/NYSPI psychiatry residency and maintains a part-time psychiatry practice. He became an Associate Professor of Psychiatry in 2013 and is a Research Scientist in the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene of New York State.
|Network Analyses
|Derek de Beurs
Netherlands Institute for Health Services
Derek de Beurs, Ph.D.
Derek de Beurs leads the mental health program at the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research. He is particulary interested in the usage of novel statistical methods to better understand the complexity of suicidal behavior. He applied several techniques such as item response analysis and curtailment to improve the assessment of suicidal behavior. Recently, he is conducting networkanalyses on existing databases with data on suicidal behavior to gain more indepth insight in the development of suicidal behavior. Together with the VU university Amsterdam, he is developing and implementing a mobile app to obtain ecological momentary data from suicidal patients. Finally, he is applying causal inference techniques to obtain causal information on cross sectional data.
|Using EMA to Monitor Suicidality
|Michael Armey
Brown University
Michael Armey, Ph.D.
Dr. Armey received his Ph.D. in psychology from Kent State University (2009). He completed his clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, joining the faculty in 2012 as an Assistant Professor (Research). Dr. Armey's program of research employs complementary multi-method assessment procedures, consistent with the NIMH Research Domain Criteria model of psychopathology research, to characterize the phenomenology and presumed mechanisms of suicidal and non-suicidal self-injury behavior, with the goal of applying these findings to the development of novel treatments. Specifically, his research has focused on ecological momentary assessment (EMA), applied broadly to all forms of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB), including suicidal and non-suicidal self-injury. Building on the naturalistic in vivo strengths of EMA, his work has more recently incorporated a number of laboratory-based bio-behavioral (e.g., genetics, psychophysiology, behavioral tasks), implicit bias assessment, and eye-tracking paradigms to enrich models detailing the underpinnings of SITB.
|Internet Interventions
|Helen Christensen
Black Dog Institute
Helen Christensen
Prof Helen Christensen is Director & Chief Scientist of the Black Dog Institute at the University of New South Wales. She is an international leader in the use of technology to both detect poor mental health and to deliver quality evidence-based therapies. Her current research focuses on the effective integration of websites, apps, sensors, social media and Smartphone tools into large-scale prevention and intervention programs for anxiety, depression and suicide.
Prof Christensen has authored over 500 refereed journal articles, seven consumer books and three open access websites and her citation rate places her in the top 1% of researchers internationally. Prof Christensen is also a vocal advocate for evidence informed policy to improve universal access to quality mental health care.
Impact of Suicide on Others
|Chair and Presenter
Exposure to Suicide in High Schools: Impact on Attitudes About Coping Strategies and Help-Seeking Behavior for Suicidality
|Madelyn Gould
Columbia University
Madelyn Gould, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Madelyn Gould, PhD, MPH, is a Professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center, and a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. During the past three decades, she has obtained extensive experience in the area of suicide prevention, conducting numerous federally funded grants from the National Institute of Health (NIMH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and publishing several seminal articles on youth suicide risk and preventive interventions. Her current SAMHSA-funded projects focus on the evaluation of telephone crisis follow-up services, continuity of care enhancements in EDs, chat crisis services, and telephone crisis interventions with callers at imminent suicide risk. She is also studying youth suicide screening programs, and suicide risks related to bullying, contagion and modeling, and the effect of a peer's suicide on fellow students.
Dr. Gould has a strong commitment to applying her research to program and policy development. She has participated in a number of U.S. government commissions on suicide prevention and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Shneidman Award for Research from the American Association of Suicidology (AAS) in 1991, the New York State Office of Mental Health Research (NYSOMH) Award in 2002, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Research Award in 2006, the New York State Suicide Prevention Center's Excellence in Suicide Prevention Award in 2011, and the 2013 Dublin Award from the American Association of Suicidology (AAS), which is a lifetime achievement award for outstanding contributions to the field of suicide prevention.
|Exposure to Suicide in the Population
|Julie Cerel
University of Kentucky
Julie Cerel, Ph.D.
Dr. Cerel is a licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky. Her research has focused on suicide bereavement, suicide attempt survivors and suicide prevention. She currently serves as President-Elect of the American Association of Suicidology. She is the author of over 50 academic publications and co-author of Seeking Hope: Stories of the Suicide Bereaved.
|Complicated Grief Treatment
|Kathy Shear
Columbia University
Katherine Shear, M.D.
Dr. Shear is the Marion E. Kenworthy Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia School of Social Work. Dr. Shear has spent decades conducting clinical research in anxiety, depression and related disorders. She developed complicated grief treatment and confirmed its efficacy in three large NIMH-funded studies. This treatment is strength-based and incorporates methods from other proven efficacious psychotherapies to provide a short-term, focused approach to fostering adaptation to loss. She is widely recognized for her work in bereavement, including both research and clinical awards from the Association for Death Education and Counseling and invited authorship of articles for Uptodate and the New England Journal of Medicine.
|Suicide Bereavement: Review of Population-Based Administrative Data Studies
|James Bolton
University of Manitoba
James Bolton
Dr. James Bolton is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba in Canada. He is the Medical Director of the Winnipeg Crisis Response Centre, the primary facility for emergency mental health care and crisis line support in the province of Manitoba, with more than 17,000 contacts annually. Dr. Bolton's research interests include suicide, bereavement, and psychiatric epidemiology. His work is supported by national and international grants including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and a NARSAD Young Investigator Award.


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Friday, September 4, 2009
I leave in about 1hr to drive down to VT/GA for the long holiday weekend! I am so very excited!! We'll be going to the VT/Alabama kick off game this weekend in Atlanta GA. I've never been to GA so I'm very excited. I hope to get a lot in within the few hours we will be spending there. Pictures, sight seeing, food....oh and did I mention the game is in the Atlanta Dome? (totally don't know how to spell that word) Apparently that is an exciting thing. My brother-in-law was pretty jealous so that made me excited to know I was going some place worthy of his jealousy ha ha. I promised to at least take pictures if not buy him something from the stadium :) I'm so nice. I also just learned, as if its not in the name of the stadium as it is, that this stadium is in a dome! This also excites me. I've never been in one of those aanndd its at night time so i'm hoping I wont get as chilly? I dunno. Any ways....I'm excited! Yay!...and this blogging post took up 6 whole minutes of my times so I now have less than an hour to go till I leave! :)
Posted by Chocolate Chip at 9:57 AM
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By Frank Cottrell Boyce
By Ammi-Joan Paquette, Laurie Ann Thompson Illustrated by Lisa K. Weber
By Laurel Snyder
By Elana K. Arnold Illustrated by Charles Santoso
By Jon Scieszka, Christopher Healy, Sharon Creech, Cathy Camper, Laurie Halse Anderson, Ingrid Law, Deborah Hopkinson, Pam Munoz Ryan
By Barry Wolverton Illustrated by Dave Stevenson
By John David Anderson
By Kevin Emerson
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Latest News Headlines
Commercial Credit News
|Ultimate finance enables coach operator
|Tuesday, 25 October 2016
Ultimate Finance has helped Liverpool-based Aintree Coachline become one of the first coach companies in the UK to take delivery of a high specification 98-seat double decker BCI Enterprise bus.
The new bus, which has recently been awarded the 'Best Modern Vehicle Award' at the world's biggest bus display, Showbus International, is built by Australian manufacturer BCI at its Chinese assembly plant.
Ultimate Finance provided an asset finance facility that enabled Aintree Coachline to purchase the new bus, which is one of just five imported into the UK, with the remaining four joining Enterprise's own fleet in Essex.
The BCI Enterprise has been added to the company's 35-strong coach and bus fleet to provide places for an increasing number of pupils requiring transport between Southport and their private school in Crosby, a contract the company has held for more than 25 years.
Designed for a comfortable ride with forward-facing, high backed seats with three point belts and air conditioning, the double decker bus is also capable of sustained motorway cruising at a limited 62 mph. This enables Aintree Coachline an opportunity to provide high capacity, short to medium-distance private hire work when it is not being used for the school run.
John Cherry, director of Aintree Coachline, believes the new purchase will set the benchmark for coach companies.
"When purchasing double decker buses, coach operators have been limited to second-hand vehicles that rarely become available. Naturally this means that when they are delivered they have already received a great deal of use and are therefore not in the best condition," he said.
"The fact there is a growing requirement to transport larger numbers should not mean we cannot provide a first class passenger experience.
"We are grateful to Ultimate Finance, with whom we have successfully worked for the past five years for providing us with the necessary finance to enable us to buy such a state-of the art bus
"Andy Ribbins and his team really do understand our business and appreciate why we needed to make such an investment to not only keep up with the growing demand for our services but to also maintain our leading position in such a competitive market."
Managing director of Ultimate Asset Finance, Andy Ribbins, had no hesitation in providing the finance facility.
"John has a great business with testament to the way he operates being the long contracts he has with many of his customers," he said.
"He knows that he needs to continue to invest and improve his fleet if he is to attract increasing numbers of people to choose to use his services and stay ahead of the field and we are delighted to help him towards this goal."
The latest edition of CCR Magazine, the leading editorial publication in the UK credit industry, is out.
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News Archive
2013 Annual Report
We are pleased to present the annual report on the status of JAIR. The report covers the activities of the journal during 2012 and the first half of 2013, as well as historical data on previous years.
Best Paper Prize Announcement
The IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize is awarded to an outstanding paper published in JAIR in the preceding five calendar years. The 2013 Prize Committee selected the following paper that provides strong theoretical results for the problem of online stochastic optimization under partial observability. The authors identify an important subclass of this problem that satisfies the property of adaptive submodularity. For this class, the authors demonstrate that approximation bounds can be achieved using a simple adaptive greedy policy. Importantly, this subclass is general enough to cover various application domains, such as active learning, stochastic coverage problems, and viral marketing. The theoretical results, corroborated by empirical evidence, suggest that the concept of adaptive submodularity is very useful in stochastic optimization problems.
The authors presented their work and a discussion of its impact at the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-13) held Aug.3-9, 2013 in Beijing.
2013 Prize: Daniel Golovin and Andreas Krause (2011) "Adaptive Submodularity: Theory and Applications in Active Learning and Stochastic Optimization", Volume 42, 427-486.
IJCAI 2013 Journal Track
JAIR is pleased to announce that six JAIR papers published during 2011-2012 were presented at the new Journal Track at the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-13) held Aug.3-9, 2013 in Beijing.
This new track allows for the presentation of research results that have been published in JAIR or the journal Artificial Intelligence during the preceding two calendar years, but never been presented at an AI conference. JAIR papers presented at the conference were:Felipe Sánchez-Martínez, Rafael C. Carrasco, Miguel A. Martinez-Prieto and Joaquin Adiego (2012) Generalized biwords for bitext compression and translation spotting., Volume 43, pages 389-418. W. Mao and J. Gratch (2012) Modeling Social Causality and Responsibility Judgment in Multi-Agent Interactions, Volume 44, pages 223-273. M. R. Costa-jussá, C. A. Henríquez and R. E. Banchs (2012) Evaluating Indirect Strategies for Chinese-Spanish Statistical Machine Translation, Volume 45, pages 761-780. P. Ghosh, A. Sharma, P.P. Chakrabarti and P. Dasgupta (2012) Algorithms for Generating Ordered Solutions for Explicit AND/OR Structures, Volume 44, pages 275-333. T. Flati and R. Navigli (2012) The CQC Algorithm: Cycling in Graphs to Semantically Enrich and Enhance a Bilingual Dictionary, Volume 43, pages 135-171. R. Ribeiro and D. Martins de Matos (2011) Centrality-as-Relevance: Support Sets and Similarity as Geometric Proximity, Volume 42, pages 275-308.