2025 Keynotes & Highlighted Sessions
Keynote Speakers
Jo Robinson, PhD
Associate Professor, Head of Suicide Prevention Research, Orygen; Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne
President, International Association for Suicide Prevention
Right Here, Right Now: Preventing Youth Suicide in the Digital Age
Novel approaches that are co-designed with young people are urgently required to tackle suicide risk in young people. Prof Jo Robinson, leader of the University of Melbourne Youth Suicide Prevention Research Unit and President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention, will elaborate on her pioneering work developing and testing novel interventions targeting suicide risk and translating evidence-based insights into practice and policy. In this keynote, she will discuss #chatsafe, a set of evidence-based guidelines that leveraged policy, industry and educational approaches to equip youth to more safely communicate about suicide online with peers. These world-first guidelines have been translated into 28 languages, embedded into Meta’s Safety Centre and included in national and international suicide prevention policies, as well as WHO guidelines for media. She will also describe a national survey of broad social and structural determinants driving suicide risk in young Australians and the novel ecological momentary assessment study that will inform the development of a suite of ‘just in time’ interventions that can be deployed to young people where and when they need them.
Biography
Jo Robinson AM is a Professor at Orygen, the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, where she leads the Youth Suicide Prevention Research Unit.
Prof Robinson’s work focuses on the development, and testing, of novel interventions that specifically target at risk youth across settings, on evidence synthesis, and on the translation of research evidence into practice and policy. Her work has a strong focus on the potential of social media platforms in suicide prevention. This includes the development of the #chatsafe guidelines, the first evidence-based best practice guidelines for safe peer-peer communication about suicide online.
Prof Robinson also has a keen interest in policy development and evaluation and has led the development of several major policy reports and briefings and is regularly called upon to provide advice to both state and federal government. She is Co-Chair of the Federal Government’s Anti-Bullying Rapid Review, a member of the Expert Advisory Group for the Development and Implementation of the Suicide Prevention Strategy for Victoria and former member of the Expert Advisory Group for the Development of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy. She was also a member of the Expert Advisory Group for the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on Suicide Prevention and Co-chair of a Technical Advisory Group for the Development of the National Stigma Strategy.
She is President and former Vice-President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and co-chair of an International Taskforce into Suicide Prevention in Women and Girls. She is a member of the Self-injury Advisory Group for Meta and was an advisory board member for the Oprah Winfrey production The Me You Can’t See.
Marylene Cloitre, PhD
2025 ISTSS Lifetime Achievement Awardee
Senior Research Scientist and Research Professor, NYU Silver School of Social Work
Lifetime Achievement Keynote - Advancing the Frontiers of Complex PTSD: Innovations in Conceptualization, Assessment, and Treatment
In 2019 the World Health Organization (WHO) accepted complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) alongside PTSD into the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). The keynote will provide a brief history of CPTSD, the rationale for the introduction of partnered PTSD and CPTSD diagnoses into the ICD-11and a description of the development of their distinct symptom profiles. Well-established self-report and clinician administered assessment measures will be reviewed as well as their applicability across different languages and cultures. Differential risk factors, prevalence rates, comorbidities and long-term consequences between ICD-11 PTSD and CPTSD will be reviewed. A description of the similarities and differences between CPTSD and borderline personality disorder (BPD) and clinical implications will be provided. Evidence regarding the clinical utility of having two distinct disorders regarding understanding etiology, environmental impacts, cognitive appraisals, chronicity and treatment will be discussed. Emerging evidence regarding strategies for treating CPTSD and future directions for treatment development will be discussed.
Biography
Dr. Marylene Cloitre is a Senior Research Scientist and Research Professor of the NYU Silver School of Social Work. Her long-standing research and clinical interests have concerned the long-term effects of psychological trauma on the social and emotional functioning of children, youth and adults. She played a central role in the organization of the mental health response to the 9/11 attacks in New York City and is a member of the advisory board for the 9/11 Memorial Museum. She was a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) ICD-11 working group on trauma-spectrum disorders and helped guide the development of the Complex PTSD diagnosis implemented by the WHO. Her current research is dedicated to the development of effective, patient-tailored, flexibly delivered mental health programs for PTSD, Complex PTSD and other trauma-related problems.
Featured Panel - Frontiers in Treatment: Multimodal Approaches to Treating Patients with PTSD More Effectively
Discussant: Paula Schnurr, PhD, National Center for PTSD
Participants: Lori Davis, MD; Eric Vermetten, MD, PhD; Ariel Lang, PhD, MPH; Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD; Sonya Norman, PhD
Paula Schnurr, PhD
Dr. Paula Schnurr is a psychologist who is Executive Director of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Mental Health. She previously served as the Center’s Deputy Executive Director, beginning in 1989 as one of the Center’s founders. She is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and is Editor-in-Chief of the Clinician’s Trauma Update–Online. Dr. Schnurr is Past-President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Traumatic Stress. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Her research focuses PTSD treatment and on risk and resilience factors associated with the long-term physical and mental health outcomes of traumatic exposure.
Lori Davis, MD
Lori Davis, MD is Senior Research Psychiatrist at the Birmingham VA Health Care System and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Alabama Heersink School of Medicine, in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, AL. She received her undergraduate degree from Duke University and her medical degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed a psychiatry residency at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Davis served as Associate Chief of Staff for Research at the Tuscaloosa She was a member of the American Psychiatric Association Mood Disorders Workgroup on DSM-5 and the 2017 VA-DoD workgroup for the revision of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for PTSD. Dr. Davis has been designing and conducting clinical trials in mental health disorders for over 30 years under continuous peer-reviewed funding, resulting in over 120 publications. Her research aims to better understand the effects of pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, vocational rehabilitation, mindfulness meditation, and other novel treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and substance use disorders.
Eric Vermetten, MD, PhD
He recently started a Trauma Innovations Network serving as a hub for novel approaches to trauma treatment. He leads an NGO European Platform for Regulation of MDMA in Clinical Care. He is lead of the International Consortium of 3MDR. He is chair of the Global Network of Traumatic Stress in the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
Ariel J Lang, PhD
Ariel J Lang, PhD, MPH is the Director of the VA San Diego Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health (CESAMH) and a Professor in the University of California San Diego Department of Psychiatry and Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. Dr. Lang's research and clinical work primarily involves assessment and treatment of trauma-related disorders. She is particularly interested in novel interventions and increasing engagement in psychotherapy. Her recent work has emphasized the use of complementary and alternative techniques, including yoga and meditation, for the treatment of PTSD.
Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD
Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer at McLean Hospital and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is an international leader in understanding the biology of Posttraumatic stress disorder, and he is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a prior HHMI Investigator, Past-president of the Society for Biological Psychiatry and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He is author of >500 manuscripts, with >70,000 citations, focused on the molecular neuroscience of fear as well as the human psychobiology of stress and trauma, with more recent work examining the interaction of stress, trauma and addiction. In addition to his own preclinical and clinical labs, he is a leader of multiple national consortia, such as the Psychiatric Genomics Consortia for PTSD and the AURORA study, for deep phenotyping and understanding biomarkers and the genetic architecture of PTSD and stress-related disorders.
Sonya Norman, PhD
Sonya Norman, PhD directs the U.S. National Center for PTSD’s PTSD Consultation Program and is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. Dr. Norman is a clinical psychologist and a researcher in the treatment of PTSD and addictions, and in novel treatments to address trauma-related guilt, shame, and moral injury. She previously directed a PTSD treatment program for U.S. Veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Norman has over 250 publications related to PTSD and associated problems and is the principal investigator of research studies funded by several U.S. federal agencies. She served as a member of the U.S. Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs PTSD Clinical Practice Guideline workgroup in 2017 and 2023 and is an elected board member of the International Society of Traumatic Stress. She received her PhD from Stanford University.