I have enjoyed learning so much from attending the inaugural Pan-American IASP Conference. It is so inspiring to be in a space with so many leading academics, researchers, policymakers, clinicians, people with lived experiences and volunteers, all for the purpose of suicide prevention.
I, along with my colleague and co-PI (Dr Andrew Meisler), are currently in the midst of collecting data from Virginia Veterans regarding risk and protective factors for suicide. It was my hope to attend this conference to soak up as much as I could about the current state of research in suicide (from all over the world). We were eager to share some of our findings to date, but also equally, if not more excited to learn more about what others are doing in regards to suicide prevention research!
I have valued all of my days here at IASP. I started by attending the genetics and suicide prevention talks. While I don’t conduct genetics research, the titles and abstracts of the presentations intrigued me, and I wanted to learn more about the role, especially of chronic inflammation, in suicide. This talk highlighted how important healthy lifestyle habits can serve to protect against suicide. The second of the talks, which focused more on the genetics of suicide, reminded me to keep in mind the familial aggregation of suicide among relatives. Both talks reminded me of how important it is to think about family history, and lifestyle habits in suicide prevention.
