Lectures and seminars Seminar on “Social media, youth mental health and suicide: what the evidence shows and what it doesn't”

Invited speakers

Professor Jo Robinson

Professor Jo Robinson is an internationally recognised researcher in youth suicide prevention and Professor at Orygen, the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. She is Head of Suicide Research and Scientific Director of the Orygen Policy Centre. She is also President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP). 

Her research focuses on developing and evaluating innovative approaches to suicide prevention among young people, including the use of digital and social media. She has examined how social media can both contribute to suicide and self-harm risk and provide opportunities for prevention and postvention. Working with young people, they co-developed social media-based interventions - most notably #chatsafe, the first evidence-based best-practice guidelines for safer peer-to-peer communication about suicide and self-harm online. Her work has also examined how platforms respond to suicide- and self-harm-related content, including online safety, harmful content and platform policies.  

Prof. Robinson also has keen interest in policy development and evaluation, demonstrated by her leading role in major policy reports, as well as advising both state and federal governments. She has also served on Meta’s Global Self-injury Advisory Group.  

Assistant Professor Yunyu Xiao

Dr. Yunyu Xiao is an Assistant Professor of Population Health Sciences and Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University. She is the Director of the X_PLORE Lab, which uses computational and epidemiological approaches to investigate youth mental health, suicide prevention and social determinants of health. 

Her research focuses on understanding the factors that shape mental health and suicide risk among young people, with an interest in digital environments and patterns of digital engagement. She examines the role of social media, mobile phones and video gaming in relation to youth mental health trajectories, with attention to the distinction between general screen time and patterns of addictive use. Her work draws on large-scale population, clinical and digital data to investigate these relationships and contributes to the evaluation of policies and interventions for suicide prevention. 

Registration

Registration is required and the deadline is the 20th of September or when the capacity is reached. For those who register before the 17th of September a light lunch (wrap) is provided.