Karl Andriessen The National Suicide Prevention Conference 2024

Karl Andriessen

Karl Andriessen (PhD, MSuicidology, BSW) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, and an associated Research Fellow at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven -University of Leuven Belgium. He has a broad interest in suicide research with a major focus on suicide bereavement and postvention. Over the recent years he has conducted novel studies (in collaboration with SPA member organisations) on suicide bereavement in adolescents and families, and adequate support for suicide-bereaved young people, including the development of the Adolescent Grief Inventory (2018), and consensus recommendations on how best to support suicide-bereaved adolescents (2021). He has also led a body of research on ethical issues in designing suicide-related studies, with a major focus on the involvement of lived experience of suicide in designing and conducting suicide research. This project resulted in consensus recommendations presented at a 2022 panel discussion hosted by SPA. His involvement in this field started in the mid-1980s as a Social Worker in youth and family counseling, telephone crisis lines, followed by leading positions in suicide prevention and suicide bereavement services, community mental health centres, and policy development. He strives to integrate his lived experience of suicide/suicide bereavement, clinical experience, and academic training. He holds a Master of Suicidology from Griffith University, Brisbane (2006), and a PhD (2018) from the School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, on a study investigating the grief, mental health, and help-seeking of adolescents bereaved by suicide and other causes of death. He received several national and international awards such as the 2005 Farberow Postvention Award of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), and serves as a Co-Chair of the IASP Special Interest Group on Suicide Bereavement (2002-2015; 2022-present). He is a scientific and/or lived-experience advisor to various projects in suicide prevention and suicide bereavement. He is an Associate Editor of Death Studies, and has published widely, including the go-to volume: “Postvention in action: The international handbook of suicide bereavement support” (with Dr Krysinska and Dr Grad; Hogrefe, 2017).