About the Academy

The International Academy of Suicide Research works globally to promote the highest quality suicide research

The International Academy for Suicide Research is an organization that promotes high standards of research and scholarship in the field of suicidal behaviour by fostering communication and co-operation among scholars engaged in such research.

The Academy’s official publication is the Archives of Suicide Research. This is a peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor & Francis.

The Academy holds annual scientific and business meetings. These have been held in conjunction with conferences such as the International Association for Suicide Prevention, the European Symposium on Suicide and Suicidal Behaviour, and the American Association of Suicidology.

New qualified members are welcome. Please go to our membership page for more information on joining the IASR.

IASR Board Members

President: Prof. Holly Wilcox

Dr. Holly Wilcox is a Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She holds joint appointments in the Department of Health Policy and Management, as well as the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Education. Holly’s research centers on advancing public health approaches to suicide prevention, encompassing policies, early intervention, and chain of care approaches. Holly is the President of the International Academy of Suicide Research (IASR), a member of the Scientific Council and Board of Directors of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), a suicide prevention consultant for the World Health Organization, and an Affiliate Investigator at the Centre for Research Excellence in Suicide Prevention of the Black Dog Institute in Australia.

Dr. Wilcox has a focus on population-based research on preventing suicidal behaviors. Her work evaluates the impact of community-based universal prevention programs targeting suicidal behaviors and leverages data linkage strategies to inform effective suicide prevention. Dr. Wilcox’s research extends to diverse settings, including schools, universities, social media platforms, and emergency departments. She actively mentors students, teaches courses at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and leads a multidisciplinary, interdepartmental suicide prevention work group at Johns Hopkins. She has won the Johns Hopkins Advising, Mentoring, and Teaching Recognition Award three times.

Throughout her career, Dr. Wilcox has been a tireless advocate for a public health-oriented suicide prevention agenda, collaborating with national and international organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, World Health Organization/UNICEF, and Pan American Health Organization. She has secured competitive research grants from various agencies and has published over 150 research articles. Dr. Wilcox has worked to adapt and implement school-based interventions in the United States and make research findings accessible to people working in various roles in the community including mental health professionals and suicide bereaved individuals. Her major research interests include population-based prospective studies of suicidal behaviors, effectiveness studies of prevention programs, data linkage for suicide prevention, and intergenerational studies of suicide risk.

President Elect: Diana E. Clarke, Ph.D.

Dr. Clarke is a psychiatric epidemiologist and research statistician as well as the Director of Research at the American Psychiatric Association and an adjunct faculty in the Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the president-elect of the International Academy of Suicide Research, a certified mental health counselor and a founding member of the Friends of NIMH, an advocacy group for ongoing research funding for NIMH, including research on diversity, disparities, and suicide. Dr. Clarke brings her clinical, research, public health and advocacy background to the area of suicide prevention and research. Dr. Clarke’s passion and commitment to suicide prevention, both personally and professionally, have been central to her life’s work. Having had the experience of supporting friends and family members who have struggled with suicidal thoughts and behaviors with and without associated mental disorders as well as losing friends to suicide, she has dedicated her career to research, education, and advocacy in mental health and substance use disorders, as well as suicide prevention. As the Managing Director of Research and Senior Epidemiologist/Research Statistician at the APA, Dr. Clarke has conducted diverse research projects that focused on 1) understanding the root causes of mental and substance use disorders and suicide thoughts and behaviors; 2) understanding the ethno-racial differences in the pathways to suicide and suicidal behaviors; 3) improving patient-centered care, 4) enhancing the quality of mental health services, and 5) addressing disparities in mental health care including perinatal mental health.

Dr. Clarke has and continue to play a pivotal role in updates to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) such as advocating for the inclusion of suicidal thoughts and behaviors across mental disorder diagnoses, advancing the use of suicide assessment and safety planning in routine clinical care, and supporting the need for cultural formulation and sensitivity in understanding mental disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Over the past 15 years, She has mentored the research career development of undergraduate and graduate research fellows as well as early research career psychiatrists, with a focus on strengthening the presence marginalized groups in the suicide prevention and clinician-scientist workforce. She is the Scientific Director of the NIDA-funded Research Colloquium for Junior Psychiatrist Investigators, a program that provides a 1-year research training and mentorship to early research career psychiatrists with interest in neuroscience, clinical psychobiology, treatment, alcohol and other substance use, health services and health disparities, and military/veterans mental health (i.e., TBI, Suicide, and PTSD) research. She has published extensively in these areas of interest and has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Department of Health and Human Services through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the CDC Foundation, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Past-past-President: Prof. Gil Zalsman

Prof. Zalsman graduated from the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel. He completed his psychiatry residency at the Geha MHC and Tel Aviv University and the Child Psychiatry residency at Geha and then at Yale Child Study Center in Yale University, USA. He completed a two-year Post-Doctoral Fellowship with Prof. J John Mann, in the Division of Molecular Imaging and Neuropathology, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, USA, where he holds an ongoing position as an Adjunct Research Scientist. He also holds a Master degree MHA (summa cum laude) from Ben Gurion University, Israel.

His academic research focuses on suicidal behavior, gene-environment interactions in childhood depression and suicidal behavior and other psychiatric disorders in adolescence. 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 Full Professor and Chair of the Psychiatry Department at Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. He is the past board member and president of the child psychiatry section at the Association of European Psychiatry. Currently he is the chair of education at the executive committee of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the past president of the Israeli Society of Biological Psychiatry. He chaired the 14th European Symposium for Suicide and Suicidal Behavior and Co-Chaired the IASR/AFSP annual suicide summit in Las Vegas, 2017.

Wikipedia page

Secretary: Prof. Anat Brunstein Klomek

Dr. Anat Brunstein Klomek a licensed clinical psychologist and supervisor in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT). she has been involved in the field of suicidality since 1999, when she started working on her PhD at Bar Ilan University in Israel focused on the relationships between adolescents at risk and each one of their parents. She then completed a post-doctoral fellowship and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in New York. At CUMC she was part of TASA-Treatment Adolescent Suicide Attempters study and was certified as an IPT-A expert. During those years she started a long research career in examining the association between bullying/cyberbullying and suicidal risk. Since 2008 she is the Assistant Editor of Archives of Suicide Research.

Currently, she is the Dean of the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at Reichman University in Israel (formerly Interdisciplinary Center, IDC Herzliya). Her previous role was the director the graduate clinical program where she added emphasis on suicide prevention. In the last decade she served as the academic advisor of the Israel Ministries of Health and Education as part of the Israeli National Suicide Prevention Program.

Dr. Brunstein Klomek strongly feel that the COVID-19 pandemic forced both the general population and decision makers to realize that mental health is not any less important than physical wellbeing. She believes we should all invest great efforts in helping people express pain and seek help when they feel suicidal. Specifically, she is interested in building solid professional chains of care and training providers in specific evidence-based interventions which are focused on suicide prevention. In the last decade she advised the Ministry of Health and Education in the development of training programs for evidence-based interventions focused on suicide prevention. These included programs to train and/or supervise various levels of professionals including primary physicians, school counselors, mental health providers, etc.

Dr. Brunstein Klomek is extremely passionate about suicide prevention and believes that local efforts and international collaborations can save lives.

Treasurer: Vladimir Carli, M.D., PhD

Dr. Vladimir Carli is a psychiatrist by background, and since the time of his residency, he has worked extensively in suicide prevention. Currently, he holds the position of Head of one of the Research Units at the National Centre of Suicide Prevention (NASP) at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. At NASP, Dr. Carli is dedicated to the development and evaluation of public health methods for suicide prevention. In addition, he provides comprehensive training in suicide prevention for various stakeholders, including first responders, healthcare personnel, medical students, media professionals, and the general public. Dr. Carli also oversees multiple research projects in the fields of e-health and mental health promotion. Notably, he is actively involved in two large multicentre projects funded by the European Union, one with 5 million Euros and another with 7 million Euros, under the Horizon2020 initiative.

NASP also boasts the distinction of being a WHO Collaborating Centre for Research, Training, and Methods Development in Suicide Prevention, and Dr. Carli serves as its co-director. In his previous roles, Dr. Carli has held positions such as Vice President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), Chair of the Suicidology Section of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), and co-chair of the Suicide Prevention Network of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP).

Throughout his career, Dr. Carli has engaged with suicide research from various angles and perspectives. His work has encompassed research projects exploring the biological and genetic determinants of suicide, the development of preventive measures tailored for high-risk groups like prisoners, and the investigation of methods to assess suicide risk. Presently, Dr. Carli’s primary research interests lie in the domain of universal suicide prevention for youth and the development of e-interventions for suicide prevention. He is notably one of the key developers of the Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) mental health promotion program, which is currently being implemented in several countries worldwide, including Sweden, Norway, the UK, India, the US, and Australia.

In his professional journey, Dr. Carli has also accumulated extensive experience in overseeing the administration of complex research units and projects. He firmly believes that his expertise and competencies can make a valuable contribution to the objectives of the International Academy of Suicide Research.

Member-at-large: Prof. Olivia Kirtley

Professor Kirtley completed her BSc in Psychology at the University of Stirling in 2011, and graduated with her PhD in Psychological Medicine from the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory at the University of Glasgow in 2016. She went on to hold postdoctoral positions at the University of Glasgow, University of Ghent, and KU Leuven, before being appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Research Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Contextual Psychiatry at KU Leuven in Belgium in 2023. Professor Kirtley is Associate Editor of Archives of Suicide Research, an Open Science Advisor and Consulting Editor at Clinical Psychological Science, and an editorial board member for Crisis, and Infant and Child Development.

Her current research uses experience sampling methods (ESM) to investigate dynamic processes involved in ideation-to-action transitions in adolescents who think about and engage in suicidal behaviour, with a focus on social processes, future thinking, and exposure to suicidal behaviour. Following on from her PhD work on emotional and physical pain and self-harm, she has maintained a strong interest in investigating the relationship between pain experiences (both chronic and acute) and suicidal and non-suicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviours. As well as her work in the suicide research domain, Prof. Kirtley also conducts research on youth mental health more broadly, mainly within the SIGMA study, a landmark longitudinal study of youth mental health and well-being using ESM in Flanders, Belgium. She also leads a number of projects to increase transparency and reproducibility in clinical psychology and ESM research, including designing a pre-registration template for experience sampling studies, leading the Experience Sampling Method Item Repository, and developing tools and tutorials about open science practices in suicide and longitudinal developmental psychology research.

Archives of Suicide Research Co-Editor: Prof. Rory O’Connor

Professor Rory O’Connor leads the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory at Glasgow, the leading suicide and self-harm research group in Scotland. The overarching aim of the research conducted within the group is to apply theoretical models derived from different areas of psychology (i.e., health, clinical, cognitive and social) as well as from the social and biomedical sciences more broadly to enhance our understanding of the aetiology and course of wellbeing and distress. Professor O’Connor is also particularly interested in the application of self-regulatory models across a range of physical (e.g., cardiac disease, multiple sclerosis) and mental health problems.

Professor O’Connor is Head of Mental Health and Wellbeing Research Group.

Group website: http://www.suicideresearch.info/