Researchers from Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, are part of an international team that aims to develop a new evidence-based way of understanding and predicting which young people are at highest risk of attempting suicide.
The Help Overcome and Predict the Emergence of Suicide (HOPES) project is funded by the London-based mental health research charity, MQ. The project aims to predict those at risk of suicide by analysing brain scans and data on suicidal behaviour of young people across the world to identify why some people develop suicidal thoughts and behaviours and others do not.
Orygen’s Dr Lianne Schmaal is the Australian lead on the project and is joined by colleague Associate Professor Mario Alvarez-Jimenez on the international team of scientists from the UK and US that is working on the project.
Dr Schmaal said suicide was a global crisis and required global collaboration between researchers to address some of the critical gaps in knowledge about suicide and suicidal thoughts and behaviours. “Combining data from approximately 4000 young people worldwide, this will be the largest study undertaken on adolescent suicidal behaviours and thoughts to date,” she said.
Suicide is the leading cause of death among people aged 15-44 in Australia, and the second leading cause of death worldwide. Associate Professor Alvarez-Jimenez said there was an urgent need to better understand why some young people attempt suicide, in order to better prevent suicide.
"We need to learn what are the mechanisms underlying the transition from suicidal thoughts to actually attempting to take one’s life,” he said. “The (HOPES) project aims to shed light on this, and ultimately help to develop the better preventions and interventions that are urgently required."