Event Description

Please join us on Wednesday 21st October, 6.15pm-8pm, at the Clarice Pears Building, University of Glasgow for the inaugural SAMH-SBRL Annual Public Lecture which aims to bring people together to explore ideas, evidence and approaches that can help prevent suicide.

We are delighted that Professor Ella Arensman from the National Suicide Research Foundation in Ireland and Past President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention will deliver a public lecture on community-driven approaches to suicide prevention.

This will be followed by a Q&A with Professor Ella Arensman, Professor Rory O’Connor, Haylis Smith and Alex Cumming.

All are welcome, you don’t need to work in mental health or have previous involvement in suicide prevention projects to attend. The event is free but requires booking.

Please sign up to attend here.

Invited Speakers

Professor Ella Arensman

Professor Ella Arensman is Head of the School of Public Health, Professor of Public Mental Health at University College Cork and Chief Scientist at the National Suicide Research Foundation. She is Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance and Research in Suicide Prevention, Vice President of the European Alliance Against Depression and past President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention. Over more than 35 years, she has initiated numerous national and international interdisciplinary research consortia in public mental health, with a focus on suicide and self-harm surveillance, intervention and prevention programmes for suicide, postvention, self-harm, depression, anxiety, excess mortality among young people and adults, and upstream approaches to mental health promotion and suicide prevention. Professor Arensman has published over 200 papers in peer review journals, and she has provided input into numerous mental health promotion and suicide prevention strategies and implementation plans at national and international level.

Professor Rory O’Connor

Professor Rory O’Connor completed his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast in 1997 and then moved to Scotland where he has been ever since. He joined the University of Glasgow in July 2013 where he is Professor of Health Psychology, Director of the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory and head of the Mental Health and Wellbeing unit there. He is a registered health psychologist who is broadly interested in self-regulation processes and health outcomes. He is Past President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and Past President of the International Academy for Suicide Research. In 2014 he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022. He also serves on the Scientific Review Board of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, is Joint Chief-Editor of Archives of Suicide Research, an Associate Editor of Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior and also serves on the editorial board of Crisis.

He is recipient of a number of awards, most recently of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s 2023 Research Award and the BPS 2022 Popular Science Book Award for When It Is Darkest. Why People Die By Suicide & What We Can Do To Prevent It. He has been named in Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers 2022 list for individuals who “have published multiple highly cited papers, ranking in the top 1% by citations for field and year over the last decade”. He is also Co-Chair of the Academic Advisory Group to the Scottish Government’s National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group. He is also a Trustee of two mental health charities: MQ Mental Health Research (as well as being a member of MQ’s Science Council) and the suicide prevention charity James’ Place.

Event Programme

18:15: Arrival, refreshments provided

18:45-18:50: Welcome from Professor Rory O’Connor

18:50-19:35: Lecture with Ella Arensman

19:35-20:00: Live Q&A Panel Session

Sign up to attend here.