Faye Attends IASP Conference in Vienna

As part of my pre-doctoral fellowship and work with the FReSH START project, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend the International Association for Suicide Prevention conference in June 2025. The conference took place in Vienna, a beautiful city with a rich psychological history, which I was able to learn more about during my time there. I had the opportunity to meet researchers from across the globe, all working on similar goals and projects around suicide prevention. Attending an event with such a diverse range of people from different locations and backgrounds was not only extremely interesting but also humbling. I particularly enjoyed hearing researchers describe the differences in access to resources and perceptions of mental health in different areas of the world.

I had many interesting conversations with others who have worked on similar trials to FReSH START. We were able to share learning from our experiences and how many of us have navigated challenges that seem to exist across trials in this area. I will take the learning from these discussions forward into my future work. I am particularly interested in the mental health of children and young people, so I chose to attend several talks on research that is happening in this area. I learnt about some of the great work that is being done, especially new developments in digital interventions and technology for this group.

I also had the opportunity to present my own qualitative evidence synthesis comparing the functions of eating disorder behaviours and self-harm as a poster presentation. This was the first ever poster I have presented, and it was a great privilege to share it with people during the conference. This opportunity gave me time to reflect about the area I may want to work in moving forward and to have conversations about potential next steps, such as PhD study.

Attending this conference was an amazing opportunity and reinforced why this field of research is so important. The voices of lived experience and stories of hope and support that were shared throughout the conference were especially inspiring. I loved visiting Vienna, and should I get the opportunity, I would love to visit again and experience some more of the wonderful culture and cake!