Prof. Argyris Stringaris

Professor Argyris Stringaris is a clinician and neuroscientist. He has been the Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCL since January 2022 and is a Co-Director of the AIM lab and clinic at UCL. Professor Stringaris is also one of UCL's Pro-Vice Provosts co-leading the Grand Challenges for Mental Health and Wellbeing. Until 2022, he was a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Section of Clinical and Computational Psychiatry at NIMH/NIH in the USA and was a Senior Lecturer and a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London. He trained in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital.

This talk will provide a comprehensive overview of suicide and self-harm from both clinical and scientific perspectives, beginning with the conceptual and legal foundations that shape clinical practice. It will examine current societal trends in self-harm and suicide, exploring whether rising rates reflect genuine increases in psychiatric symptoms and disorder prevalence in the general population. The developmental trajectory of suicidality will be addressed — including when ideation and behavior emerge across the lifespan, how they differ by developmental stage, and whether sensitive periods exist. The talk will then turn to the psychiatric conditions most strongly associated with suicide, critically evaluating the evidence for causal links and what genetic, neuroimaging, and other mechanistic findings reveal about potential pathways to intervention. It will conclude by acknowledging the challenges facing clinical practice, including notable variability in suicide management across European countries and the practical difficulties confronting practitioners working in this high-stakes domain.

• Saunders, R., Suh, J. W., <...>, & Stringaris, A. (2025). Effectiveness of psychological interventions for young adults versus working age adults: a retrospective cohort study in a national psychological treatment programme in England. Lancet Psychiatry, 12, 650–659. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(25)00207-X.
• Stringaris, A., & Vidal-Ribas, P. (2019). Probing the irritability-suicidality nexus. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 58(1), 18–20. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2018.08.014.
• Chiu, K., Stringaris, A., & Leigh, E. (2025). Social anxiety symptoms and their relationship with suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms in adolescents: A prospective study. JCPP Advances, 5(1), e12249. doi: 10.1002/jcv2.12249.
• Leibenluft, E., Allen, <...> & Stringaris, A. (2024). Irritability in youths: a critical integrative review. American Journal of Psychiatry, 181(4), 275–290. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.20230256.
• Jha, M. K., Minhajuddin, A., Chin Fatt, C., Kircanski, K., Stringaris, A. et al. (2020). Association between irritability and suicidal ideation in three clinical trials of adults with major depressive disorder. Neuropsychopharmacology, 45, 2147–2154. doi: 10.1038/s41386-020-0769-x.
• Krebs, G., Clark, B. R., Ford, T. J., & Stringaris, A. (2025). Epidemiology of body dysmorphic disorder and appearance preoccupation in youth: prevalence, comorbidity and psychosocial impairment. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 64(1), 30–40. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2024.01.017.
• Vidal-Ribas, P., Janiri, D., <...> & Stringaris, A. (2021). Multimodal neuroimaging of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in a U.S. population-based sample of school-age children. American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(4), 321–332. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20020120.