Bonnie Scarth National Suicide Prevention Conference 2026

Bonnie Scarth

I am a suicide prevention researcher-practitioner and PhD candidate in the School of Psychological Sciences at Monash University, with 25 years’ experience across frontline practice, programme leadership, evaluation and research. As team leader of a regional suicide prevention and postvention programme in Aotearoa New Zealand, I wrote and led the Southern District Suicide Prevention Action Plan 2020–2023 and coordinated postvention responses across the district. I have served on the Child and Youth Mortality Review Committee, the Aotearoa Research Ethics Committee and the National Suicide Prevention Office Lived Experience Partnership Group (2025–2026). My PhD, funded by a Suicide Prevention Australia scholarship, works with two lived-experience co-design groups to develop whole-family approaches to perinatal suicide prevention. I led the first systematic review of interventions for perinatal suicidal behaviour, have co-authored two Cochrane publications on emergency care after self-harm, and was a Fulbright scholar at Cornell University. My supervisors are Dr Kylie King, Professor Anne Buist, Professor Sarah Hetrick and Dr Vincent Mancini. I live in Perth and am a mum to three children, two in their twenties and one at primary school.