Dear Colleagues and Friends

With the wishes about Happy Holidays I am taking the opportunity to give you a brief news update on the IASR.

First, I would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief Barbara Stanley , of Columbia University in New York and the Deputy Chief Editors– Thomas Bronisch of the Max-Planck-Institute in Munich and Alan Apter of Schneider’s Children’s Medical Center , Tel Aviv, Israel for their devoted work with the Archives of Suicide Research. There are many excellent submissions and the schedule is running very well.

With your help we also make the Academy, more geographically representative by recruiting new full and associate members from centres of excellence, throughout the five continents.

We accepted excellent researchers and I am very grateful to all colleagues, who participated in the selection and nomination process.

I hope for more searching from all of you and more nominations and I would like to ask you to focus also on female scientists.

As you also know, we succeeded in the end to overcome considerable difficulties in establishing an IASR account in the United States . The Karolinska Institute has been able to host IASR bank account and I can gladly inform you that dues for full and associate membership are coming in.

I apologize along with the secretary of IASR, David Rudd of Texas , Tech. University , the Psychology Department, for the difficulties in collecting membership fees. I would also like to thank Thomas Bronisch , the previous secretary of IASR, for his gracious assistance during this difficult time.

The next meeting of IASR is approaching very quickly and it will be held on the 28 th of August 2007 in Killarney , Ireland . The past, present and the President elect, will present an overview of the genetic research in the field of suicidology. John Mann will focus on the serotonin system, Jouko Lönnqvist on genetic findings in schizophrenia, disorder of great interest in suicide prevention and me on genetic findings in the Hypothalamic-Pituitary Adrenocortical – Axis.

I also hope that we will have the opportunity to discuss the latest developments signalled by the FDA in the United States about “the lack of protective effect” in the treatment of depression with antidepressant medications in people under the age of 25, while reducing such risks in older people.

I would also like to remind you that search for the election of the new president will start very soon, and David Rudd will send to you a reminder about nominations.

Once again I wish you all Happy Holidays, and very good New Year 2007.

Danuta Wasserman,

President of the IASR