Welcome to the Conte Translational Neuroscience Center for the Study of Antecedents of Suicidal Behavior at New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University.

The Center studies the causes of suicidal behavior, which is responsible for about one million deaths each year worldwide. Knowing the causes of suicide is essential to the mission of reducing the death toll.

Suicide is almost always a complication of psychiatric illness and occurs in those with a pre-existing predisposition.

Center Focus

The Center seeks to determine how childhood adversity and genes interact to increase (or decrease) the risk for suicidal behavior throughout adulthood.

A multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists are using mouse models of different infant experiences to learn how such experiences may cause what they are observing in a matching set of studies of the brain of those who die by suicide that is being analyzed after death, and in living patients who are at risk for suicidal behavior.

The patients undergo brain scans and other evaluations of how they regulate their mood and also respond to stress in their everyday lives to determine what makes them vulnerable to suicide and what can be changed to make them more resilient.

How To Participate

We welcome your participation, whether as a patient or research volunteer in one of our studies, or as researcher who wants to spend time learning how we do research into this important cause of death or disability, or as a supporter who helps by philanthropy to accelerate the pace of this potentially life-saving research.

Click here to learn more about the enrollment process and our ongoing studies.