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Honorable Guest ...
Dr. Brian L. Mishara, PhD.
The Organizing & Executive Committee for ICLA2008 has the pleasure of announcing that
Dr. Brian L. Mishara, PhD. has accepted the invitation from Master Sheng Yen ,the Founder
of International Caring for Life Awards(ICLA) to attend the activities throughout this event, September 6-8,2008, to be taking place at Taipei, Taiwan.
Some information relevant to Dr. Mishara follows :
Brian L Mishara, Ph.D.
President,
International Association for Suicide Prevention
(IASP)
Director, Centre for Research and Intervention on suicide and euthanasia
Professor, Psychology Departement
Universite du Quebec a Montreal
C. P. 8888, Succ Centre-ville
Montreal (Quebec) H3C 3P8
Canada
More detailed biographical statement
for
Brian Mishara
Brian Mishara was born in Boston in the United States on February 10, 1947. He worked as a professional photographer and originally studied theatre and literature before eventually completing a Masters Degree and Doctorate in Psychology. After working in a mental hospital in Northville, Michigan for 4 years, where he was in charge of a rehabilitation unit for the elderly, he went to Boston where he was a Research Associate at the Laboratory for Community Psychiatry at Harvard University. He then taught at the University of Massachusetts at Boston before moving to Montreal, in Quebec, Canada in 1979 to teach at the French speaking University, the University of Quebec at Montreal. There he is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Centre for Research and Intervention on Suicide and Euthanasia (CRISE). His interdisciplinary research centre, CRISE, has become one of the largest centres studying suicide in the world and is unique in the close collaboration between the researchers and people who are working directly in suicide prevention.
His publications, including six books in English and five in French in the areas of suicidology and gerontology, include research on the effectiveness of suicide prevention programmes, studies of how children develop an understanding of suicide, theories of the development of suicidality, ethical issues in research, euthanasia and "assisted suicide," and evaluations of helpline effectivenes. He has also published over 180 articles in scientific journals and book chapters on his research.
He has been Principal Investigator in numerous research studies, including a contract financed by the US government to determine the quality of help provided by telephone helplines across the United States, In this study his team listened to and rated (from their offices in Canada) 2,611 telephone calls to crisis centers in the U.S. His more recent publications include discussions of ethical concerns regarding the limits of suicide prevention activities and societal obligations to suicidal people who are in distress.
Besides his university activities, Professor Mishara was a founder of Suicide Action Montreal, the Montreal regional suicide prevention centre and the Quebec Association of Suicidology. He is a past president of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. Brian Mishara is also on the Board of Directors of Partnership for Children, a charitable organization based in England, that promotes and distributes a mental health promotion program for young children in primary school, called ¡§Zippy¡¦s Friends.¡¨ He was one of the people who created this program and he has published several research studies of the effectiveness of the programme in helping young children cope with everyday problems. By the end of 2008, this program, Zippy¡¦s Friends, will have been provided to over 180,000 children in 13 different countries, including Brazil, India, Lithuania and, starting later this year, in Shanghai, China.
Professor Mishara was the recipient for 1994-1995 of the prestigious Bora Laskin Canadian National Fellowship on Human Rights Research for his work on human rights issues regarding the involvement of physicians and family members in assisted suicide and euthanasia. He has been recognized in Canada for his research on suicide prevention by the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, who presented him with an award for ¡§Outstanding Research in Suicidology¡¨ in 1997, and in Quebec, by the Quebec Association for Suicide Prevention, who bestowed upon him their ¡§Meritas¡¨ award for his contribution to suicide prevention in Quebec in 1992.
Since 2005, Professor Mishara has been the President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), a non-profit Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that is in official relations with the World Health Organization. As IASP President he has worked to promote suicide prevention initiatives in areas of the world where interest or programmes are solely lacking. For example, under his leadership, IASP developed a collaborative agreement with the WHO which resulted in testing pilot programs in reducing suicides by controlling access to dangerous pesticides (the most frequently used method of suicide in the world) in India, Sri Lanka and China. IASP has just begun providing culturally adapted training in suicide prevention in countries where specific training in suicide prevention is not available. This initiative will begin this year with two workshops in Uganda; with the content of the workshops adapted by local mental health workers and the workshops will be provided to physicians and community health workers from throughout the country.
>> Publications BRIAN MISHARA June 2008
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