From Early Career to Lifetime Achievement: Honoring Suicide Prevention Researchers at the 2025 Award Dinner

Recently, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) honored its 2025 Research Award recipients at its annual Research Award Dinner. On April 30, AFSP leadership, Board and Scientific Council members, leading suicide prevention researchers, and friends and family of the awardees gathered for a night of celebration and reflection at the Conrad Hotel in New York City.

The honorees included leading experts in suicide prevention Marsha Linehan, Ph.D., ABPP, who was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award; Katherine Anne Comtois, Ph.D., MPH, who received the Annual AFSP Research Award; and Gonzalo Martínez-Alés, MD, Ph.D., who received the Paula J. Clayton Early Career Research Award.

An early career researcher, Dr. Martínez-Alés was recognized for his AFSP-funded grant, "Effectiveness of Pharmacological Interventions to Prevent Suicidal Behaviors Among Individuals at High Suicide Risk: A Target Trial Emulation." The Paula J. Clayton Early Career Research Award honors Dr. Clayton, AFSP's Medical Director from 2006 to 2013 and a pioneer in mood disorders, suicide prevention, and bereavement support. Following her passing in 2021, her daughter Clarissa Weirick established the fund to support promising early career researchers in suicide prevention like Dr. Martínez-Alés.

This year’s Research Award Dinner was particularly special, since it honored two researchers with a shared career and personal history, and whose work is strongly linked: Dr. Comtois and Dr. Linehan.

Dr. Comtois was presented with the Annual AFSP Research Award for her game-changing interventions that have transformed how clinicians approach and treat patients with suicidal thoughts, behavior, and risk. These interventions include treatment approaches like Caring Contacts and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Dr. Comtois also developed an adaptation of DBT, Accepting the Challenges of Employment and Self-Sufficiency (DBT-ACES), a program designed to help psychiatrically disabled individuals find and maintain living wage employment.

Though unable to attend the event, Dr. Linehan was honored with the AFSP Lifetime Achievement Research Award for her formidable research and clinical contributions, including the creation of DBT, which is considered the gold-standard treatment for patients with borderline personality disorder and those with suicidal behavior. Because of her connection with Dr. Linehan, Dr. Comtois was able to speak on her behalf, and shed light on the transformative importance of DBT in the field of suicide prevention.

In her presentation, Dr. Comtois reminded us that Dr. Linehan came to suicide prevention research after experiencing her own struggles with severe mental illness and suicidality as a teen. During her years as an instructor, Dr. Comtois told us, Dr. Linehan kept on her desk a framed quote from poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet:

“Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness… were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.”

The quote is just one example of how, in her work, Dr. Linehan valued the power of storytelling, both in sharing her own history with mental health, and in encouraging her students and patients to do the same.

Dr. Comtois ended her presentation with an image of the framed quote, and with an acknowledgment to Dr. Linehan, “For making all of us do better, try harder, and be more motivated to change the world.”

To learn more about suicide prevention research — including what we’ve learned, our grants, and AFSP’s library of suicide research videos — click here.