Associate Professor Mark Goldblatt
115 Years of Suicide Prevention: What Have We learnt?
Dr Mark Goldblatt is a Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and teaches and supervises at McLean Hospital.
Professor Thomas Niederkrotenthaler
Building Bridges for Suicide Prevention: From Werther to Papageno Effects.
Thomas Niederkrotenthaler is Professor and Head of the Public Mental Health Research Unit, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. He is founding chair of the Wiener Werkstaette for Suicide Research and incoming Editor in Chief of Crisis – The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention.
Professor Ann John
Hope in the Hallways – suicide prevention and self-harm in schools, universities and workplaces.
Ann John, a public health trained former General Practitioner, is a Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry at Swansea University Medical School with a research focus on suicide and self-harm prevention and children and young people’s mental health. She is a Principal Investigator at the National Centre for Mental Health and Co-Director of DATAMIND, the Health Data Research UK Hub for Mental Health. During the pandemic, Ann co-led a number of pivotal projects in the field including the Living Systematic Review.
Golli Marboe
Building Bridges for Suicide Prevention: From Werther to Papageno Effects.
Born in Vienna in 1965, Golli Marboe works as a freelance journalist, holds lectures on media issues and has produced TV documentaries for broadcasters across Europe for 30 years. He is also a member of SUPRA, a multilevel national suicide prevention programme in Austria.
Professor Chan Lai Fong
Strengths & Suicide Protective Factors in Low and Middle-Income Countries: Implications on Global Suicide Prevention.
Dr Chan Lai Fong is currently Professor of Psychiatry & Consultant Psychiatrist at the National University of Malaysia. She trained in psychiatry at the National University of Malaysia and completed a Clinical Fellowship in Mood & Anxiety Disorders at the University of Toronto, followed by a Master of Science in Affective Neuroscience at Maastricht University.
Dr Emmanuel Nii-Boye Quarshie
Adolescent and Youth Self-Harm and Suicide Prevention in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).
Dr Emmanuel Nii-Boye Quarshie is a mental health advocate and a faculty member in the Department of Psychology, University of Ghana, Accra. He has a PhD in Psychological Sciences (with research focus on adolescent self-harm and suicidal behaviour) from the University of Leeds, UK.
Professor Matthew Spittal
AI – Looking into the Future.
Matthew Spittal is Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Centre for Mental Health and Community Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne. He founded and leads the Mental Health Epidemiology Unit, a unit located within his centre specialising in the design and analysis of studies in mental health.
Professor Lakshmi Vijayakumar
Suicide Among Refugees.
Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar is the founder of SNEHA, an NGO in Chennai for the prevention of suicide. She is the Head, Department of Psychiatry, Voluntary Health Services, Adyar, Chennai. She is a member of the W.H.O’s International Network for Suicide Research and Prevention. She is an Honorary Associate Professor in the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Professor Thilini Rajapakse
Suicide and Self-Harm in Sri Lanka: Examining Life after Self-Harm – To Explore Potential Preventive Strategies.
Thilini Rajapakse is Professor of Psychiatry attached to the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Peradeniya, and also serves as Consultant Psychiatrist at Teaching Hospital Peradeniya. Her areas of research interest include depression, self-harm and suicide in Sri Lanka.
Associate Professor Mark Sinyor
Science or Magic? What a Harry Potter-Based Program for Middle Schoolers Can Teach Us About Changing the Narrative on Suicide.
Dr Sinyor is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a Staff Psychiatrist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on the topic of suicide. His research focuses on population-level strategies for suicide prevention with an emphasis on how media messaging impacts suicide.
Dr Annette Erlangsen
Older adults at risk of suicide
Dr Annette Erlangsen is an Associate Professor and Head of program at the Danish Research Institute for Suicide Prevention in Denmark. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA and Honorary Associated Professor at the Centre for Mental Health Research, Australian National University, Australia.
Professor Gustavo Turecki
Understanding the Role of Genes and Biology on Suicide Risk: Myths and Facts
Professor Gustavo Turecki is a clinician scientist whose work focuses on understanding brain molecular changes that occur in a major depressive disorder and suicide, as well as molecular processes that explain antidepressant treatment response.
Dr Daiane Borges Machado
Economic Interventions for the Prevention of Mental Health Problems and Suicide: The Role of Cash Transfers.
Dr Daiane Borges Machado is a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and a research associate at the Center for Data and Knowledge Integration for Health – CIDACS/ FIOCRUZ.
Associate Professor Benedikt Till
Music and Suicide Prevention: Viennese and International Examples.
Dr Benedikt Till is Associate Professor at the Public Mental Health Research Unit, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. His research focus lies on the roles of the mass media in suicide and suicide prevention.
Shelby Rowe
Being a Good Relative: Suicide Prevention From a Native American Perspective
Shelby Rowe is executive director of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, the only federally supported resource center devoted to advancing the implementation of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.
Dr John Draper
21st Century Calling: A Historical Perspective on the Future of Crisis Hotlines.
Dr John Draper has over 35 years of experience in crisis intervention and suicide prevention work and is considered an international expert in behavioural health crisis services (hotline, online chat, text services, etc). Dr Draper’s experience includes working on a mobile crisis outreach team, founding and administering New York City’s first 24/7 crisis hotline as well as becoming the founder and former Executive Director of the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (now the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) for 18 years.
Dr Sandy Onie
The Role of Culture and Religion in Suicide Prevention: A proposed Framework Based on the WHO LIVE LIFE Approach
Dr Sandersan Onie is a researcher in suicide prevention at the Black Dog Institute, UNSW Sydney, and adjunct Professor of Psychology at Universitas Airlangga. In IASP, he is a Vice President for 2025 – 2026 and Indonesian National Representative 2024 – 2027.
Professor Ellenor Mittendorfer-Rutz
Research on Work and Suicidal Behaviour – Quo Vadis?
Ellenor Mittendorfer-Rutz is Professor in Insurance medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, where she is also Head of the Division of Insurance medicine and Acting Head of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience. She further holds a Guest professorship at the Medical University in Vienna.
Professor Ilan Meyer
Suicidality in LGBTQ Populations: Insights from Current Research and Future Direction
Dr Ilan H. Meyer is Distinguished Senior Scholar for Public Policy at the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA’s School of Law Adjunct Professor in Community Health Sciences at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University.
Professor Paul Yip
Online Suicide Prevention Program: Challenges and Opportunities
Professor Paul Yip is the Director of the Centre Suicide Research and Prevention and a chair professor of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong, He served as a vice president of International Association of Suicide Prevention (IASP).
Associate Professor Gergö Hadlaczky
Topic: To Be Announced
Gergö Hadlaczky has received a PhD in Experimental Psychology from Stockholms University, he is the Director of the Stockholm County Council Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Ill-Health (NASP), and an adjunct lecturer at the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at Karolinska Institutet.
Professor Ying-Yeh Chen
Women at Work, Men in Care: A Path to Suicide Prevention.
Professor Ying-Yeh Chen is a psychiatrist and researcher specializing in the social and environmental determinants of suicide. She is affiliated with National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taipei, Taiwan, and serves as an attending psychiatrist at Taipei City Psychiatric Center, Taipei City Hospital. Additionally, she is the Chief of the Research Division at the Taipei City Suicide Prevention Center.
