Call for papers - Preventing suicide and self-harm in young people: Challenges and strategies

Sunhye Bai, PhD, MPH, University of Oregon, USA

Dr. Bai is an Assistant Professor at the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health and the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon and a clinical psychologist. She directs the Strengthening Adolescents and Families Everyday (SAFE) lab. Dr. Bai studies how the family and school environments shape risk for depression and suicide in childhood and adolescence. Specifically, she looks to the everyday lives of youth to identify daily risk and resilience processes that can be targeted to prevent suicide in diverse populations, and examines novel strategies for addressing these targets. Her translational research program relies on community-engaged approaches, longitudinal observational designs and intensive repeated measurements to capture risk and resilience processes in diverse communities and inform prevention programs. Her work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychological Foundation and the Society for Research on Child Development.

Jocelyn I. Meza, PhD, University of California - Los Angeles, USA

Dr Meza is an Assistant Professor In-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and a bilingual licensed clinical psychologist at UC Los Angeles. Currently, she is the Associate Director of the Youth Stress and Mood (YSAM) Program and the Principal Investigator & Founder of the Health Equity & Access Research & Treatment (HEART) lab at UC Los Angeles. Her research interests include studying socio-ecological risk and protective factors for suicide and self-harming behaviors among youth. She aims to integrate psychological, cognitive, and sociocultural influences to predict suicide and self-harm behaviors and, importantly, to identify therapeutic targets for culturally responsive interventions. In addition, Dr Meza is expanding her research to adapt evidence-based psychosocial interventions for ethnoracailly diverse youth, particularly Black and Latinx youth and systems involved youth (i.e., dually involved youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems). Dr Meza is a certified bilingual psychologist trained at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco in cognitive-behavior and dialectical behavior therapies. Dr Meza’s work in advancing mental health treatments among ethnoracially minoritized families has been recognized by the National Latinx Psychology Association and has also received the prestigious Early Career Award for APA Division 53 (Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology).

Lucas Zullo, PhD, Thomas Jefferson University, USA

Lucas Zullo, PhD is the Clinical and Fellowship Director of the David Farber Advancement of Suicide Prevention Intervention, Research, and Education (ASPIRE) Center and Assistant Professor at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr Zullo’s research focuses on youth suicide prevention, with an emphasis on family-focused treatments. He has regularly obtained funding for his research, including funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, American Psychological Association, and a National Institute of Mental Health Diversity Supplement. Previously he was the Project Director of the $13M PCORI-funded Youth Partners in Care for Suicide Prevention study, a multisite clinical trial spanning five diverse emergency departments across the United States. Dr Zullo has a passion for community-partnered research and elevating the voices of those with lived experience. His research also includes quality improvement of clinical care, especially for improvement of care for LGBTQ+ youth at risk for suicide. Dr Zullo is extremely active within national organizations, including the American Psychological Association, Association for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN). Within the NCTSN, Dr Zullo is one of the founders and co-leaders of the NCTSN Trauma-Informed Suicide Prevention and Postvention Community of Practice and is a collaborator within the NCTSN Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression Collaborative group. Additionally, Dr Zullo is an on-call consultant for The Trevor Project and 988.